Elements of Opposition
by Alara Rogers
Summary: The Mane 6, plus Spike, travel to the alternate universe to rescue Discord from their own twisted counterparts. Meanwhile, Discord struggles to keep his mind and will intact, while the alternate Twilight Sparkle seeks to use him as a source of magical power to be harnessed to Order, and the alternate Fluttershy expresses her own twisted mixture of desire and resentment against him.
1. Letter from Hell

_**WARNINGS:** __This story contains explicit torture, rape (not sufficient to warrant higher than M rating). _

* * *

**Harmony, 1 AM**

In the middle of the night, Spike woke with an overwhelming need to belch.

This wasn't that shocking. While Princess Celestia had very rarely sent a letter this late at night, Princess Luna was also capable of sending letters, even if she almost never did. What was unusual was the surge of horrible nausea and the terrible taste in his mouth, the taste of spoil and rot.

One paw on his mouth and the other on his belly, Spike got to his feet. "Ugh..." He retched, and then belched. His flame came out a sickly yellowish green, and what looked like a _badly_ mistreated scroll materialized and clattered to the floor before he could grab it.

Scrolls were not supposed to clatter. There was plainly something extremely weird about that thing.

The nausea passed, but if anything the terrible taste was worse. Spike picked up the battered, squashed scroll, and recoiled. It was _wet._ Saturated with some dark substance. Spike gagged again as he caught a whiff of the smell. _Blood_. Also a number of other disgusting smells he didn't even want to parse out right now.

He dropped the scroll, gingerly, on a desk, and ran for the kitchen, where he put on a kettle of boiling water. He pulled down a small ceramic container in the shape of a fat, grinning bear, which had been labeled "SPIKE'S TEA – DRAGONS ONLY!", and took out a pinch of the concoction within. It was cinnamon, and a mixture of the hottest peppers you could get in Equestria, and a mix of mineral dust consisting of gold, ruby, obsidian and diamond, all powdered so fine they looked like glitter. Spike put his tea concoction in a mug, poured the boiling water into it, poured a second cup of boiling water into a mug with no tea in it and drank that straight up because a taste this nasty needed some plain boiling water to burn it off, and then waited until his tea was done steeping and gulped it down as well, swishing it in his mouth to wash out every last trace of the bad taste.

Twilight was exhausted. Between the massive amount of studying history and court protocol she had to do before she could take her place in court on a regular basis, the frequent teleportations to Canterlot to assist the Princesses in some ceremonial duty, her research into the mysterious box and the potential location of keys for it, and her desperate attempts to still manage being the Ponyville librarian _and_ spend time with her friends so they wouldn't feel as if she was drifting away from them now that she was a princess... Spike _had_ seen her this tired before, but generally either final exams or the imminent end of the world were looming. There really were no major crises right now – the Discord situation was stable, in that he'd been missing for two months and no sign of chaos on the horizon anywhere; politics appeared to be going smoothly at the moment; no signs of Changelings, no mysterious mystic forces, everything basically as calm as things ever got in Ponyville. There wasn't any good reason for her to be working herself to exhaustion right now except that she was Twilight and that was what she did.

So there was no way Spike was going to wake her up to deal with this.

Spike carried the document out of the bedroom and into the main library, where he put on a lamp. There was no way he could sleep right now; the hot peppers he'd needed to wash the taste out had woken him up, and besides, he was intensely curious. What the hay _was_ that thing? It looked like a scroll that had been beaten up badly and soaked in something gross, blood he thought, but it was much too heavy to be a scroll, and things rattled inside it. Gingerly, touching it only with the tips of his claws because wow was this thing ever gross, he pried it open. The ends of it had been smushed and twisted, so it was more like a makeshift package of sorts than a scroll.

When he got it open numerous pages fell out. At least he assumed they were pages. Several of them were crumpled balls that had been squashed as small as a sheet of paper could get. Some were folded, but no two were folded the same way; one had been folded lengthwise again and again until it was very skinny, and then had been squashed like a bendy straw. Another had been folded widthwise, then lengthwise, then widthwise, then widthwise again, then lengthwise. Another had been folded into triangles, badly, with corners sticking out all over. Two sheets had been rolled into each other like a scroll ought to be, and those had been on the outside rolled around everything else, directly under the outer layer of packaging. One appeared to be an attempt to make an origami pony head, if the pony in question was a weird mutant of some kind with three horns and an absurdly wide face.

Neither the outer scroll that had been used as packaging, nor the two inner sheets that had actually been rolled the way scrolls were supposed to be rolled, had any sort of address, salutation or signature to indicate who the document had been sent from or who it was being sent to. Sighing, Spike decided to do his best to solve the mystery, since he couldn't sleep anyway. Besides, part of him was thinking this might even be a little bit fun. Take on a task that might challenge even Twilight a little bit, while she was sleeping, and do the whole thing for her. Present her with the results of _his_ research in the morning. Watch her beam proudly at him. Yeah, that sounded nice.

Carefully he started unfolding the pages. The first thing he noted was that the writing did not look Equestrian. And then he realized, yes, it did, it was just abysmally bad handwriting. The characters were a random mixture between the blocky characters of hoof-writing, used by pegasi and earth ponies, and the smooth flowing characters of horn-writing, used by unicorns once they'd mastered telekinetic control of a quill. The size of the characters varied wildly, the way a foal's writing might, and the writer obviously had no clue how to keep characters in a straight line without guidelines on the paper, because the writing bent up, or down, or hit the side of the page and then ran down it sideways, and there were sometimes what looked like entire clauses inserted into the openings left by lines of writing that bowed in opposite directions. Had a foal written this? But there were a _lot_ of pages, and none of them had any margin; the writer had used up the paper entirely, writing things along the sides of the margins in tiny letters that probably a foal couldn't have made.

Okay. This was a really weird document, and now, Spike had a true mystery on his hands. Who was it from, who was it to, and why was it written in this bizarre way? The paper was strange; it appeared to be randomly mixed swirls of wood pulp and... vellum. Vellum was a durable but horrible writing medium made from animal skin; griffons used it almost exclusively, since their mountainous homeland was short on trees and they were meat eaters, but most ponies would find the thought of writing on a dead animal's skin to be horrifying. But this wasn't a skein of vellum, it was the substance of vellum randomly mixed with the substance of wood-pulp paper... with occasional rough spots that seemed like the wood pulp had gotten some bark in it, and occasionally _fur_ embedded in the paper. The fur was earth-toned, some brown, some gray, some black, occasionally dark red. It was as if somepony had used magic to construct the paper out of a pile of dead bodies and tree limbs. They weren't always even pony bodies. Spike shuddered as he located a spot on the vellum where the faint shape of reddish dragon scales was plainly visible. _Maybe_ that had come from a snake or a lizard... but he'd never seen a snake or a lizard come in shades of red like that.

It was a document being sent to the Alicorn of Magic, it smelled like blood, and the paper seemed to have been made by some sort of necromancy. Now Spike was more determined than ever to find out exactly who sent this message and why, before Twilight got her hooves on it. If it was some kind of evil magic that would mesmerize Twilight or something, well, Spike ought to be immune to it.

He laid the pages out as flat as he could get them. There were seventeen of them, not counting the envelope, which was so thoroughly saturated with blood that if it had ever had writing on it, the writing was long since blotted out completely. The rest of the pages were double-sided, more or less, though two of them stopped randomly in the middle of the page and left the rest empty, and one had a giant green stain in the center that the writer had managed to mostly avoid writing in. The ink, whatever it was – it appeared to be varied shades of dark brown or maybe dark red – had soaked through the paper in multiple places, which made it even harder to read because the writing from one side interfered with the writing on the other. None of the pages had anything at the top or the bottom to indicate who they were being sent to or from. And there was no page numbering, so no easy way for Spike to get this in order.

Spike started puzzling out the top lines of the pages, hoping he could use them to fit the document into the correct order.

As he attempted to read, he noticed that the writing material appeared to be changing without pattern as well. Most of the letters seemed to be formed with a stylus dipped in dark reddish-brown ink, where often the lines were thin and fine, made by the point of a sharp object, but then often thickening as if the writer's stylus was slipping sideways and part of the line was being made by the side of the stylus, the lines growing wider and wider as the stylus laid more and more of itself on the paper. Some of the letters appeared to be made with a quill that seemed like a magically stiffened caterpillar, something wide and fuzzy. When the wide fuzzy quill was in use, the handwriting changed slightly and the letters pointed in the opposite direction, and the smearing pattern indicated the writing wasn't being done by a hoof _or_ a horn but by a paw, something that would accidentally drag across the page and smear the ink, just like Spike himself did sometimes by accident. Occasionally the ink would change to something more akin to a dark brown crayon, especially when the fuzzy quill was in use.

When he finally deciphered the first line of the first page he looked at, it was unhelpful. _"not __that__ stupid, I saw it coming... I was not at all prepared for what Twilight did." _The second equally so. _"because ponies think they look funny. I ask you how could something like that ever come from my DNA?"_

Then the third chilled Spike, reading as it did like something so much more appropriate for a possibly necromantic and horrifying document written on dead animals in completely chaotic handwriting. _"Have you ever eaten something that is so awful, your gut is heaving even as you put it in your mouth and you're actually crying from how unbelievably awful it tastes but if you don't eat it you'll lose control of your muscles and they'll start just eating it without"_

The fourth page Spike looked at made him wonder if maybe he was up to this, if maybe he shouldn't save the document for Twilight after all. _"and I'm hungry and I hurt all the time and somepony who looks and sounds exactly like my best friend, my first and closest friend, the pony who taught me the value of love and friendship, is raping me on a regular basis."_

He pushed that page away for a moment, horrified by the mental images. Up to now, the creepy paper and the terrible handwriting and the outer wrapping soaked in blood had made Spike think of some document created by an evil unicorn necromancer to possess Twilight's soul or something. With that paragraph his perceptions shifted. This was a document created by the _prisoner_ of the evil unicorn necromancer. A prisoner who was probably female, given that somepony was raping her... but she was writing with a paw, not a hoof, so she was probably a griffon or... maybe a dragon? A dragon filly, being held prisoner by an evil necromancer who made evil paper, because a full-grown dragon couldn't possibly be victimized by a pony that way but Spike knew all too well how helpless a young dragon was in comparison to a full-grown pony, particularly a talented unicorn mage.

This was horrible and twisted, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know anymore, but someone was in trouble. Someone was hurting and desperate, someone was a prisoner being tortured, and maybe she might even be a young dragon like him. Now Spike _had_ to decipher the rest of the document. He picked up the next sheet.

_"slipping on the soap in the bathtub and cracking your skull. Universes where I am dead usually got to be that way because someone murdered me._

_In this universe it was Spike. Yes, little Spikey Wikey. He took a sledgehammer to me."_

Wait, _what?_

Spike bore down on that particular page. He hadn't killed anypony, ever, certainly not with a sledgehammer. Who was claiming that he had killed somepony? Wait, if he was reading this correctly, the writer was claiming that Spike had killed _her_. Which begged the question of how she could possibly be writing this. And besides Spike hadn't. Could it be a different Spike?... nicknamed Spikey Wikey? What were the odds?

Instead of going on to a different page, he worked on deciphering that one in full.

_In this universe it was Spike. Yes, little Spikey Wikey. He took a sledgehammer to me. A sledgehammer that doesn't exist in our universe because when I found a weapon lying around that could destroy gods, I turned it into a sword and chucked it into another dimension where it very nearly landed on and killed some poor lake naiad, who fortunately then stepped up to the plate to guard it so only heroes could get their paws, or hooves, or hands, on it, and not bratty little dragons who want to prove how manly they are, or something. I don't actually know why he did it, because he thinks I already know, given that he thinks I am the same guy he took a sledgehammer to and he apparently monologued about his intent for some time before doing it (which by the way talk about your Fridge Horror, maybe you can't comprehend this because when you got turned to stone it was a cockatrice and cockatrice stoning knocks the victim unconscious, but when I was in stone I could hear everything, so I'm just imagining being there trapped listening to this pathetic little dragon monologuing about why he is going to kill me and being completely unable to move or escape or even speak to defend myself and thinking SWEET CELESTIA'S FLANK JUST SHUT UP AND DO IT ALREADY, LISTENING TO YOU GO ON AND ON IS SHEER TORTURE!)_

Oooo... kay. So the writer was claiming both that she (or he? The writer did say "thinks I am the same guy") had been murdered by Spike with a sledgehammer _and_ that someone else had really been _and_ that maybe this whole thing was happening in her (or his?) imagination _and_ that either she (or he) had been stoned by a cockatrice when it happened, or... or something. It didn't make any sense. And what were the references to universes?

He picked up another sheet, hoping it would shed some light.

_"Which hurts more than you can possibly imagine when she changes midstream from one to the other, because you can't tell the difference. They don't sound different, they don't look different." _Not helpful.

_"to try to rescue me, in part because this is all my fault and in part because you despise me and will probably enjoy hearing about how I have been humiliated here..." _Okay, so that fit in with the hypothesis that the writer was a prisoner being tortured and was writing for help. But "you despise me?" Who did? Was this writer someone Twilight knew? Spike knew? The princesses knew?

_"sweetness and light, black and white mentality, and excruciatingly bad dialogue that mark these universes. So I can't go to a universe where I never existed and I can't go to a universe where I currently exist;"_ More talking about universes. The letter had to be for Twilight, to be discussing such abstruse and strange concepts as multiple universes. Although, earlier the writer had referred to Twilight in the third person, saying she (or he) was not prepared for what Twilight did. So... now Spike was totally confused.

_"silent as often as I can. Hasn't worked so far; apparently no matter how many times they humiliate me I can't get it through my head not to make sarcastic comments that lead to my being forced to admit to things I never wanted to admit to, like that I'm afraid and I hurt so much I'd do almost anything to make it stop." _ Not new information. The writer was a prisoner, being tortured; the writer had a tendency to make sarcastic comments, but some of the passages Spike had read proved that much.

_"deliver them herself. If she's dissatisfied with me, she'll just tell Fluttercruel. _

_Although honestly, given the choice between Applejack punishing me herself and Rarity tattling on me to Fluttercruel so she'll do it... I prefer Applejack."_

What?

Who was Fluttercruel? Some sort of evil doppelganger of Fluttershy? Why would Applejack _or_ Rarity be involved in punishing the writer of the document? Spike had had a mental image of an evil unicorn captor in his head, but now he was even more confused than before. Applejack and Rarity weren't holding a prisoner, and Fluttershy was not an evil doppelganger... oh, no, was this document from the _future?_ No! That would mean Applejack and Rarity would start working for the evil unicorn who might be an evil doppelganger of Fluttershy or might have made an evil Fluttershy or might be a changeling pretending to be Fluttershy and Spike himself was going to kill someone! With a sledgehammer!

No, there had to be a better explanation! Spike picked up the next page.

_"actually perceive it as being like another dimension or something, and there he is tortured __eternally__. Not until he dies, redeems himself, serves his sentence, or goes catatonic or feral, like in Tartarus. __Eternal__ torture, of the most horrible kind they could think of, and believe me, the creatures that invented this concept are __great__ at thinking of horrible things. I'm not, of course, literally in hell any more than I'm literally in Tartarus, but it's a metaphor so I was hoping my geas wouldn't force me to spell that out. Apparently not." _ No, that wasn't helpful.

_"I'm afraid I have to admit it, this is entirely my own fault. Now I'm told that many individuals in a situation such as the one I find myself in might engage in a bit of unproductive self-blame, such as 'If only I'd been'" _...Not helpful either.

_"When I discorded her I basically had to just overwrite the top of her personality via brute force, rather than bringing something out that was already within, so I'm pretty confident that this is the case and there is no part of my Fluttershy that would enjoy tying me down on my back with my wings pulled open so far it feels like they're going to tear loose, whipping me (on my chest and belly, given that I'm tied on my back) with a diamond-studded hemp rope, and then ordering me to perform sexual acts on her. Pretty confident."_

Spike dropped the paper he was holding, stunned and horrified.

Discord. The writer was Discord. It made sense – the terrible handwriting, shifting penmanship, lines going all over the page and completely disorganized method of packaging the document, the bizarre paper... the sarcastic commentary, the reference to "you despise me"... it made sense, it made horrible, horrible sense, but then it stopped making sense completely, because... because an evil doppelganger of Fluttershy was torturing and... and _raping_ Discord? How? How did that even _work?_ Wait, Spike didn't want to know how that would work.

But seriously, how? Discord was probably the most powerful being in Equestria. How could _Discord_ be held prisoner and tortured by _ponies?_ No, wait, it had to be changelings, he'd mentioned Applejack and Rarity so it wasn't just an evil doppelganger of Fluttershy involved, it was a whole lot of them... including Spike himself? Was he an evil doppelganger too? And... it still didn't make sense. Which was usual, when dealing with Discord. But the changelings weren't powerful enough to hold Discord prisoner... were they?

He read through the top lines of the next several pages rapidly, trying to find something, anything, to tell him what was going on here.

_"rain fish in Canterlot Fluttershy would be furious with me, and when you have only one friend she has quite a lot of psychological leverage."_

_"showers her friends with absurd numbers of gifts, but she's also avaricious, much more ambitious, and keeps the gems she finds, or sells them for large sums. Also she has no problem having the former God of Chaos as a slave."_

_"I miss cotton candy __so much__. I dream about it. You'd think I'd dream of taking bloody revenge or something, but no, I dream about floating on a cloud of cotton candy, nibbling at it."_

_"But after Fluttercruel hurts me and uses me for her own depraved purposes... then she tends my wounds. Then she's kind, and sweet, and behaves like Fluttershy, and I'm so alone and I miss my friend and sometimes I close my eyes and pretend."_

_" I can cast a spell on Spike so his fire redirects, one time, to his cognate in my universe. I think I can guilt him into letting me send this letter. He's going to think he's sending it to Celestia. It's going to be really really hard but I think I can possibly manage to not tell him I'm casting that spell."_

And with that it clicked. Somehow. The strange yellowish green fire, not his normal color at all; the feeling of nausea he'd gotten when he'd belched the document up; Discord talking about universes and evil Fluttershy and Spike himself had killed Discord with a sledgehammer except apparently he didn't and "his cognate in my universe..." Spike understood now. It was a weird abstract theory that Twilight had mentioned a few times, and also it had appeared in one of the Daring Do comics which weren't even canon, where Daring Do went to a universe where she was evil and Ahuizotl was good. _Alternate universes_. The stuff of abstract discussions and comic book fantasies.

Discord was in another _universe_. Where, apparently, all the ponies Spike knew and cared for were evil. Not that he would rule out basically decent ponies inflicting some pain on Discord, but there was no justification for rape, ever (seriously how _did_ that work? Fluttershy wasn't a unicorn; even if Discord had no powers how could she make... him... okay, Spike needed to stop thinking about this right now because it was horrifying and gross and also _completely gross_ and oh no he was never going to be able to unread any of that stuff...)

Spike considered folding up the pages and leaving them for Twilight now. Now that he knew what the message was, he could guess that it was for Twilight or maybe Princess Celestia, and Discord hadn't thought to write down who it was for on the envelope probably for the same reason he hadn't thought that his paper would fit better if he'd folded it all _neatly_. Maybe Spike didn't want to know any more about this. He didn't owe Discord anything; after what Discord had done to Twilight the first time he'd broken loose, Spike had _hated_ him for some time, and although he was reformed now, he was still annoying as all getout.

But no. Here Spike had bits and pieces of a story. He'd spent his entire life as a librarian's assistant, surrounded nearly every waking moment by books and inundated with the theories of documentation and classification and storytelling technique. He couldn't just go to sleep with these fragments of a story in his head. He had to get them together into the correct order and read the whole thing, so he had the full picture. And maybe it still wouldn't make sense after that, because it was Discord, but at least Spike needed to _know._

So he began the laborious process of trying to match pages to each other based on the text on the bottom of one page seeming to belong to the text on the top of another. It did not help in the slightest that it seemed Discord hadn't done something normal, like written on one side of a page and then started on the second side; no, he'd done things like written three pages and then written on the backside of each one of them, but not in the same order. So Spike had to actually stamp the documents with numbers in order to sort them correctly for reading.

And then, once they were sorted, Spike began copying out the letter onto a real scroll, in his own neat handwriting, so that Twilight and Princess Celestia wouldn't have to struggle through the horrible handwriting and total disorganization and the ink bleeding through the paper (literally, since according to Discord and the smell of it, the ink _was_ blood) that Spike had had to in order to read it. It took him twenty pages, mostly because his handwriting was much neater and more even than Discord's, so what had taken Discord thirty-three pages (some of which had giant empty spaces in them) took Spike a lot less... although Spike's version took more sheets overall because he wasn't writing on the back of them.

When he was finally done it was morning, Celestia's sun was peeking over the horizon, and Spike felt like he might never sleep again. He was exhausted, but the horrors in that document haunted him. A world where, instead of (or maybe in addition to) discording the Bearers in the maze, that world's Discord had corrupted the _Elements_ themselves, and it had changed the Bearers. Rarity, selfish. Applejack, a manipulator. Pinkie Pie... Spike didn't even know, because he was trying very very hard not to think about what Discord had been implying when he'd talked about Pinkie Pie. Rainbow Dash, obviously so disconnected from her friends that Discord never even saw her.

Fluttershy, a _torturer_. And... and _rapist_. (_How_ did that work?)

And Twilight, who had done something to herself so that she could beat her world's Discord even with her now evil friends, and now she was evil, turning a blind eye or actively participating in the torture of someone who... okay, he was a big jerk, he really had discorded the Element Bearers and plunged Ponyville into chaos, but he had gone to their world to make it rain fish in Canterlot and for that they were beating him with diamond-studded whips? And making him eat bird poop? And... Spike didn't even want to think about what else the letter had talked about.

He could understand them really, really hating Discord. If he, himself, and apparently it sounded like he hadn't been changed, if he could have picked up a sledgehammer and destroyed the living statue of Discord, he who'd never ever wanted to kill anyone or anything... and they didn't know this was a different Discord... okay, he could understand them hating him. Whatever the other Discord could have done to make the other Spike kill him once he was stone and helpless, it had to have been horrible beyond imagining. But put him in _stone_, or... kill him quickly and cleanly if you were a killer and that was a thing you did, not... not torture. Not rape.

Fluttershy couldn't be allowed to read this. He wasn't sure any of them should except for Twilight. She'd know how to handle it. She'd know what to do.

It had occurred to Spike more than once that this could be some kind of a sick joke, a bizarre and twisted prank. Certainly Discord wasn't above playing such a prank. But Spike was positive it wasn't the case. Discord might pretend he was being held prisoner as a joke, but talking about being forced to vomit and being beaten and being _raped_ (did he actually say the evil Fluttershy had had Angel Bunny rape him? Now _that_ sounded like a sick joke, but not one Discord would tell on himself.) Discord was too proud. He wouldn't say _these_ things as a joke. He probably wouldn't say them if they were true, except that apparently he was under the effects of a spell that forced him to spill his guts verbally or he'd end up doing it literally.

Plus. Discord had claimed he was using his own skin to make the paper... and there were places where fur, in the colors of Discord's fur (or the color of Discord's fur when it was soaked with blood, apparently), or dragon scales in a very, very faded version of the color of Discord's scales, were embedded in the paper. He'd said he was using his own blood and the dirt of the floor for ink... the dark reddish-brown ink and the crayon-like writing. He'd said he was writing with his fingers, his talon or the fingers on his lion paw, and that was consistent with the sharply pointed stylus that every so often got longer, like Discord's talon was lying against the paper instead of pointing straight down, and the fuzzy quill, which did, now that Spike knew, look exactly like Discord writing with a furry finger from his lion paw. The blood-soaked envelope didn't just smell like blood; there was a difference between Spike's own blood and the smell of pony blood, and the blood he smelled on the packaging was like the two were mixed up together.

Discord was smart, and an excellent liar, but Spike just couldn't believe that he could possibly be detail-oriented enough to construct such a _consistent_ fake.

They couldn't leave him there. Spike didn't like Discord, but... they couldn't leave him there. They couldn't leave anypony to suffer like that. In the letter he kept saying he didn't really believe Twilight would come to his rescue... but Spike knew better. He knew his Twilight Sparkle, the real one, not the evil one from that world, would never leave _anypony_ in a situation like that.

* * *

**Harmony, 7 AM**

It was much, much too early in the morning when Twilight felt her shoulder being shaken by a small dragon paw. "Twilight! Twilight, get up, it's morning and I have something important to show you!"

Twilight dragged herself upright. "Is there tea?" she mumbled.

"Yup. Double-black plus ginseng, ginger, cinnamon, and a _lot_ of honey."

"Where?"

"On the kitchen table. Last time I gave you your tea while you were in bed, you drank it and then fell back asleep and then you got mad at me for letting you oversleep."

She shoved her hoof through the unruly mane falling in her eyes, trying to push it back, because it was way too early for magic, not without her tea. "Can you go to Sugarcube Corner and get—"

"Croissants, got'em, fresh baked, raspberry and cherry flavors with icing, plus I fried you an egg, plus apple juice for when you burn your tongue on the tea."

"Okay, okay. Just give me five more minutes."

"Did I mention fresh-baked? Like, gonna get cold if I give you five minutes? Just like the egg I fried you?"

Twilight moaned. "Spike, I'm so tired..."

"I know," Spike said. "I know just how you feel, I was up all night. But this is important."

She blinked at him. "You went to bed before I did..."

"Yeah, but a document came in during the night and... well, I had to stay up all night deciphering and re-copying it so it was readable."

Twilight shook her head, both to get mane out of her eyes and because that didn't make any sense. "Spike, who sent a document to you in the middle of the night? And why did you have to decipher it? Was it some kind of secret code?"

"No, just... really, really, _really_ bad handwriting. Pages and pages of it. And I can't show it to you until after you've eaten, but it's important."

A document Spike thought was important enough to stay up all night deciphering, but he didn't want to give it to her right away? "You can give it to me and I'll read it during breakfast."

"Uh, Twi... no, no you won't. 'Cause there is no way I am letting you read this thing until you eat."

"Spike, you said it was _important!_" She stumbled out of bed. "If it's important, how can it wait until I've eaten?"

Spike sighed. "You'll... uh, you'll know when you read it. It... it's bad, Twilight, it's really bad. You won't be able to eat if you read it before breakfast. I could barely make yours."

"_What?_ Is it an invasion? A plague? An invasion of plague-carriers? Parasprites? Wait, somepony isn't _dead_, are they?"

"Nopony's dead yet, but..." His voice cracked. "It's not any of those things, Twilight, but you just gotta read it for yourself, okay? It can wait until you eat breakfast, but please just get downstairs and eat? I don't want to be the only one who's read this..."

She sighed heavily. "Fine."

Anticipation and worry made the egg tasteless, the croissant dry, and led her to drink her tea too fast, burning her mouth. She wished Spike would have just given her the document; whenever she was anxious, food didn't even taste good.

"Okay, I've eaten. Where is it?"

"Here's my copy." Spike handed her a sheaf of scrolls. "I've got the original over on your desk, but trust me, this is a _lot_ more readable."

She glanced it over. "Who is this from?" With it recopied by Spike, there were no handwriting cues to suggest the origin.

"Discord."

Twilight stopped dead on her way to her desk, the scrolls still floating in front of her head, and turned back to Spike, who was walking behind her. "Discord? It's from _him?_ Does he say where he is or what he's doing? Did he turn evil again?"

Spike's voice cracked. "He did something dumb, but I don't think... I don't think we could've called it evil, really. Just kind of a really big, stupid, mean prank. And... and they're _torturing_ him, Twilight."

She stared at him. "Who is?"

"We are. Evil us. Twilight, just read it, it's... it's so weird I don't wanna try to explain it, I'm afraid I'm gonna mess it up. You're smart enough to understand it. Just... it's not about him being a danger we have to stop. It's about him being _in_ danger and he's asking for help."

"I don't understand how we could help _Discord_. Anything that could threaten him is much more powerful than we are..."

"You'll know when you read it."

So now she needed to read it more than anything else, but probably not while walking or she'd stumble over her own hooves, not that she hadn't done that many times before. The first thing she wanted to do, though, is get the original document. Because Spike might have copied it perfectly, but she always felt she could get more of a sense of a text when she read it in the original writer's pen.

Except that when she got a look at the original document, she saw exactly what Spike meant. It couldn't be from anyone _but_ Discord; nopony else could have such total disregard for niceties like the size of the characters or how they lined up with each other. She was actually somewhat shocked that the words she could make out were punctuated correctly, though the capitalization was almost completely random.

Spike's version had fixed all that, and didn't smell terrible, so she decided that this time, she would read his version. And then she'd read Discord's version. After casting a spell to block her sense of smell.

The first thing Twilight noticed was, as she might have expected, Discord couldn't stick to a point and kept tossing things out as if he'd already explained them when he hadn't yet. Also that his opinion of her was very low for someone who was apparently asking for help. She frowned as she read _"...well, if you knew, you probably wouldn't care. In fact I'm having a hard time believing I should bother mustering up what little energy I have to write this message, because I'm almost entirely certain you won't care and might even laugh and certainly won't lift a hoof to try to rescue me, in part because this is all my fault and in part because you despise me and will probably enjoy hearing about how I have been humiliated here... but on the other hand I have very few options". _It was true that if his situation really was all his fault, he probably had it coming to him, but that didn't mean she wouldn't help – what –

_"Literally I am in the basement of an alternate universe version of Fluttershy, chained to the floor, scraping together what very little magic I am able to use to transform the bark off tree roots and loose-hanging flaps of my own skin into parchment, which is why some of these pages will be part vellum, part wood paper."_

Discord didn't have loose-hanging flaps of skin. He was lean and seemed to be made entirely of long thin muscle, like a snake. Nothing about him bulged or flapped (aside from wings, which were supposed to flap, obviously.) To have loose-hanging flaps of skin, he would either have had to have lost so much weight he was skeletal, or... or the skin had been cut loose from his body and was a literal hanging flap, not just a place where the skin was loose. And... he was pulling his own _skin_ off to make it into paper? Chained in a basement? _Fluttershy's_ basement?

Spike had said this was bad, but the first page of the letter had been so sardonic, even flippant in places, that when Discord had talked about not believing she'd help him she'd perceived it as whiny. As if what he was suffering was only all that bad in his own head. But this—

_" tried gnawing my way out of the basement but there are spells on the dirt walls and I'm too weak to dig a deep hole to get around them. Also if evil goateed Fluttershy caught me I don't even want to imagine what she'd do to me. She doesn't really have a goatee, that's a reference to a joke you won't get, but she really is evil. I shall henceforth call her Fluttercruel because I am trying very very very hard to separate her in my mind from my dear friend"_

_"I almost think I'd rather be—_

_No._

_No, I'm not going to say that, I'm not going to believe that. I am not better off dead. Once I start thinking that way I've lost. Where there's life there's hope and all that. I got out of that damned statue, I can get out of this."_

Get out of what? What was happening to him? Why couldn't he write this damn thing in order, or stick to a topic? He was chained up in the basement of an evil version of Fluttershy in an alternate universe, and his skin was hanging loose, and he was struggling not to believe he was better off dead, but _how?_ How could ponies take _Discord_ captive? He wasn't even vulnerable to Fluttershy's Stare.

_"I want to go home. I hate it here. I'd hate it here even if I weren't chained up in a basement being routinely beaten with diamond-studded whips."_

_"I think maybe she is trying to make me associate terrible tastes and nausea with chaos, because she smiles cheerfully as she brings me the most disgusting things possible to feed me, tells me I should like it because it's not what any normal pony would want to eat and therefore it's chaotic and different, and then orders me to eat it and __I have to__. The obedience spell keeps me from disobeying a direct order. Have you ever eaten something that is so awful, your gut is heaving even as you put it in your mouth and you're actually crying from how unbelievably awful it tastes but if you don't eat it you'll lose control of your muscles and they'll start just eating it without your input, and at least if you can control your muscles you can keep your tongue out of the way of the food so you don't have to taste it so much?"_

Twilight was not naïve. She was very well read, and among the things she had read, there had been accounts of war, of savage violence between ponies or between ponies and other species, of slavery and rape and torture and cruelty. But none of what she'd read had ever impacted anypony she knew. They were tales of ancient times, recorded history for the sake of making sure such things could never happen again. Nopony she knew had ever been beaten with a whip (_diamond_ studded whips? That would be like... being hit with a whip and cut with thrown shuriken and battered with flung rocks, all at the same time. How could anypony do that to anyone, even Discord? Discord had never physically tortured anypony she knew of.) Obedience spells? Being forced to eat horrible things? _Why?_

Who could do that, even to Discord? _Why_ would anypony do that? _How..._

Now she was riveted, horrified but compelled to keep reading. She read as Discord wrote about why he'd gone to an alternate universe, and why he'd chosen one where his counterpart was dead, and what a bad idea that had turned out to be. She read about the alternate Spike killing the alternate Discord, and part of her mind keened for her dragon baby, her little brother, an alternate who had to be someway, somehow like her Spike because ridiculous stuff like that comic about Daring Do going to the universe where she was evil and Ahuizotl was good couldn't possibly happen. Ponies' personalities, and other creatures, couldn't possibly just be completely different for no good reason. _Events_ led to changes in personality. She'd raised her Spike to be like a pony, to turn to the answers of friendship and harmony first, never murder. What could have changed, what could have driven _Spike_ to kill a helpless, neutralized foe?

And then she read about how. It didn't sound like Spike had been directly affected, but her friends' counterparts had been turned evil by the alternate Discord doing something to the elements themselves, tying them to their opposing principles so that they were permanently transformed into beings that contained their opposites as well as their original selves, and how badly must that be tearing them to bits? Was it that bad? Had the alternate Spike really been justified? She remembered Fluttershy yelling insults and laughing, Pinkie insecure and paranoid, Rarity obsessing over Tom the not-a-diamond... but even if they'd become those things for the rest of their lives, that couldn't be terrible enough to justify killing Discord, could it? Or torturing him? Not if the Elements had been an option, not if they'd gotten him into stone anyway... it sounded like they weren't that bad, Discord was saying that Fluttershy was still the animal caretaker and veterinarian, it sounded like it couldn't have affected them as badly as what he'd done to them in the maze—

_"somepony who looks and sounds exactly like my best friend, my first and closest friend, the pony who taught me the value of love and friendship, is raping me on a regular basis."_

Twilight almost dropped the scroll.

Was this a joke? She remembered an incident, after Discord had reformed but before she became an alicorn, when she woke from a horrible dream about Discord raping her to find that he'd _seen_ the dream, having accidentally gone into her mind while he was sleeping as well, and he'd seemed genuinely insulted, as well as actually embarrassed. He'd told her then all kinds of outlandish things about how attractive he was and how some ponies with tastes he referred to as "refined and discerning" and Twilight referred to as "weird" would obsess over him, and she hadn't been sure she believed any of it. The idea of Fluttershy raping Discord was so outlandish, so incredibly unbelievable, that it almost had to be a joke... didn't it?

_"I actually didn't mean to write that._

_I hate this spell._

_At least I managed not to write the thing I didn't want to write about above, but at the expense of telling you something I thought I'd rather die than tell you, but blood doesn't erase worth a damn and it turns out that when you go into convulsions when you try to tear up your own paper because you want to not reveal something you've just stupidly put down on the paper due to a compulsion to tell the truth, you decide that the humiliation of admitting things like that is more bearable than the alternative."_

There were rips in the paper, small ones. No. This wasn't a joke. If Discord was joking about a thing like this, he would be melodramatic about it, he would go into embarrassing details (at least as embarrassing as some of his claims had been the day he'd been telling Twilight that he was too awesomely attractive to stoop to raping ponies), he would take it to the point of absurdity... he wouldn't say that he'd never meant to say any of that, that he'd tried to unsay it but couldn't, that he'd thought he would rather die than admit to it. It was impossible, but she believed it anyway.

The letter described the others. It sounded as if Pinkie Pie had turned into an ax murderer or something. Applejack manipulative and weaselly, Rarity selfish and avaricious, Rainbow Dash a cipher because Discord never saw her. But it was Fluttershy her mind kept coming back to. Evil Fluttershy. A Fluttershy who could beat somepony with a whip, or rape them.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to find her Fluttershy and hug her for just being Fluttershy. She wanted to kill the alternate Discord, except he was apparently already dead. And she wanted to get her Discord out of there. As he described more and more of the tortures he was suffering and how they worked, she felt more and more protective, possessive and enraged that these others, these twisted parodies of herself and her friends, were doing this to him. Yes, he had gone there of his own free will, yes, he'd antagonized all of them, yes, apparently for some reason he was trying to conceal that he wasn't their original Discord, but... nothing justified this. Nothing.

And then he started talking about his theories about what they were trying to accomplish, how he believed they were trying to turn him into an unquestioningly obedient tool, which... could be right. The things he said they were doing to him were consistent with what a pony would do to another to accomplish that goal, based on things she'd read.

And then he wrote about the ways it was starting to work.

_"But after Fluttercruel hurts me and uses me for her own depraved purposes... then she tends my wounds. Then she's kind, and sweet, and behaves like Fluttershy, and I'm so alone and I miss my friend and sometimes I close my eyes and pretend. And this is the absolute worst thing I can do because seriously, Stockholm Syndrome anyone? If I don't want to be broken I have to remember at all times, I hate her. She's not Fluttershy. She's hurting me and I don't deserve it._

_But if I did deserve it I could make it stop by not doing the things that make me deserve it._

_And I hurt so much and it's all you ponies' fault that I'm vulnerable to the emotional manipulation, that I want a friend so badly in my time of need that I pretend my captor is my friend, I let her pleasure me (not that I have a choice in what activities I have to let her perform, but I can resist in my mind, if I'm not so worn out that I just don't bother), I let her hug me and pet me and tell me I'm doing so much better, I'm being such a good colt... and I fall for it. I know it isn't real but I want it to be and honestly I'm used to making the things I want to be real become so and I admit I know that won't work here but I'm sorry, all right? I'm weak. I've never been tortured like this before. I've certainly never been tortured before while I had any psychological dependency whatsoever on another sentient being._

_I need someone to care about the fact that I'm hurting. I'm fairly sure it's not going to be you. But if I give in and pretend that it's her, she'll break me. I'm trying not to break, I'm trying. But it's so hard."_

Twilight had to stop for the moment. She couldn't see anymore, with the tears in her eyes blinding her. Fumbling around on her desk, she found a handkerchief and wiped her eyes with it.

She'd never sincerely believed Discord _actually_ cared all that much about Fluttershy, or having a friend. He was, from all she could see, kind of a rotten excuse for a friend; he did things like pretend he'd forgotten Fluttershy's name for a joke. He'd been almost no help whatsoever dealing with the plunder vines, which had turned out to have been his own creation, even though they would have destroyed Fluttershy's home. Well, okay, his taunting Twilight about thinking she was better than her friends had led her to go back into the Everfree to help, and if she hadn't, her friends would never have figured out what to do to save the Tree, but on the other hand, she'd almost been eaten by the vines, and she had no way to know which outcome Discord had intended, or if he'd just been taunting her for amusement and hadn't had any deeper purpose for good or ill. He had skipped out entirely on the Welcome to Ponyville party Pinkie had tried to throw for him, causing her to have to change it to a celebration for Fluttershy's success after it had already started, and then he'd gone to apologize to Pinkie for discording her in the maze and the result of _that_ had been Pinkie declaring that she was not, in fact, going to be friends with him. Pinkie, who insisted on being friends with every pony in Ponyville. Pinkie wouldn't talk about what Discord had done to earn this status, except to say that she was not _not_ friends with him, she just wasn't friends with him... but from Pinkie that almost sounded like a declaration of eternal enmity.

From Twilight's perspective, it had seemed as if the whole thing with Discord reforming and being friends with Fluttershy was one of his games. That apparently he'd decided he could cause more entertaining chaos and remain free and safe from retaliation if he claimed to be friends with Fluttershy, and could therefore have civil conversations with Fluttershy's friends that nonetheless were emotionally traumatic. She _still_ burned with the kind of humiliation that made her want to sink into the floor when she remembered him taunting her about her dream. He didn't really show any signs of caring about anypony, even Fluttershy herself. Fluttershy claimed things were different when they were by themselves, that Discord wasn't willing to show emotional weaknesses around ponies he didn't trust but that he was much more genuinely nice to just her when the others weren't present.

Apparently the truth telling spell and the utter desperation he must be feeling had driven him to expose himself in ways he never would have when he was powerful and free. There was no longer any doubt in her mind at all that the letter was sincere, that everything Discord was writing about was at least true to his perception, because... Discord would simply never, ever admit to breaking down and pretending his torturer was his friend because he needed a friend too desperately to keep himself from doing it, unless it was both true and he was somehow compelled to say it. If this was a prank or a joke, he wouldn't have said any of that. Pretending to be a captive being tortured was... well, possibly something Discord might find funny, given how weird and broken and sometimes incredibly dark his sense of humor was. Pretending to be suffering from the beginning stages of Stockholm Syndrome wasn't funny at all. He just looked pitiable. Pathetic, in the literal, non-derogatory use of the term.

As much of an utter jerk as he'd been virtually every time she'd dealt with him, it looked to Twilight now like Discord's feelings might have been sincere all along, that Fluttershy was right and he really did care about her. And, possibly, that the reason Discord had been an utter jerk around Twilight herself had been that he apparently thought she despised him and would snicker behind her hoof at the thought of him being tortured. How could he think such a thing about her? Didn't he know she would _never_ want to see anypony suffer this way, no matter what they'd done?

It seemed he didn't. Somehow he'd gotten the idea into his head that she hated him so much she would _laugh_ at his pain. If that was how he'd been feeling the whole time since Princess Celestia had asked Fluttershy to reform him, no wonder he'd taunted her and mocked her and been as annoying as he could manage without ending up back in stone. And that made her feel horrible. Discord was broken and desperate and begging her for help, not because he thought she would help him but because she was his only option, and somehow the things she'd said and done to him had led him to think she hated him and would laugh at his situation. He couldn't even have the confidence she would have if she was in such a situation and had sent a letter home asking to be rescued. He didn't seem to believe his letter was going to do him any good at all, and he was just writing it because otherwise he had no hope whatsoever.

She couldn't imagine how that would _feel._ To believe that nopony would want to help you, to believe that your only hope was to beg a dire enemy who would probably laugh at you and that therefore you had basically no hope at all. To know that the people you knew and cared about were alive, and safe, and that they'd gotten your cry for help, and to believe they would do nothing anyway.

Twilight remembered the incredibly awkward conversation Discord had forced her into after she'd had that dream. He'd been deeply offended that she'd dreamed him as a rapist, not because he seemed to have a moral problem with rape but because his self-esteem depended on an image of himself as someone that some ponies could actually find attractive, and he thought that a pony imagining him as a rapist was assuming that he was too bizarre and hideous to find a consensual partner. At the time she'd been much more concerned with his outrageously self-aggrandizing claims as to how attractive some ponies found him, and her own anxiety and humiliation over him taunting her about that dream, but she saw a connection now. Discord _didn't_, deep down, think ponies would ever want or like him or react to him in any way but fear and enmity.

He'd actually bragged to her about the fact that none of his claimed sexual exploits had been anything other than meaningless physical interactions, one-night stands based on lust, and now that she thought about it, his entire criteria for who he'd said he'd been willing to sleep with had been based on how much they made him feel wanted. (He'd phrased it as how desperately they'd begged, but it was the same thing.) He'd been willing to give up his villainy, more or less, despite the fact that he plainly _still_ didn't really care that causing mayhem wilfully was simply wrong, on the strength of _one_ shallow friendship based on mostly nothing except a single pony being kind to him and claiming friendship with him. And now, based on what he wrote when he was being tortured and he was desperate, it seemed as if he was interpreting that friendship to be as deep and meaningful as _her_ friendships were, and as if he was interpreting Twilight's irritation with his antics and wholly reasonable distrust of him as if she still saw him as an evil nemesis and felt nothing but hatred for him.

For the first time it occurred to her how awful his life must have been, how lonely and empty it must be to love and depend on something that virtually everypony hated and therefore to be rejected by everypony, completely alienated. To have never had a friend, in thousands of years, and to want one so badly deep down inside that you'd give up your entire lifestyle to keep your first one... and when you couldn't give it up after all, to put yourself in danger to get what you needed without losing your friend. He'd pointed out himself what a dumb idea it had been to go someplace where his alter ego was dead. But he'd done it anyway because he needed Chaos, _and_ he needed Fluttershy, and now what he had was horrible parodies of both that were causing him nothing but pain and despair, driving him to expose his most humiliating emotional weaknesses to someone he thought was an _enemy_ who would _laugh_ at him.

When she was done with the document, she was shaking, and there were still tears in her eyes despite repeated dabs with the handkerchief.

"Spike?"

He handed her a second, drier handkerchief. "You see now why I wanted you to eat first?" he said.

She nodded. There was no way she'd have an appetite after reading this. "How did this come in? Did he really send all those sheets?"

"He had them wrapped in an envelope kind of thing. Which was _completely_ soaked with blood. I don't even know how so much blood ends up on a piece of paper." Spike sighed. "After we rescue him, can we teach him how to fold paper neatly into itself? He had, like, twelve different ways he was folding the paper, so it was all totally disorganized."

"Chaotic, you mean?" Twilight managed a weak smile. "Spike, I don't think we're going to teach Discord how to fold paper neatly."

"Um, yeah, good point."

"Take a message for Princess Celestia?"

"Yeah, sure!"

_Dear Princess Celestia,_

_Last night Spike received a multi-page document from Discord. He claims to be in a parallel universe, where evil versions of us have bound him to obedience and captivity with their versions of the Elements of Harmony. Spike re-copied the document because the original was very difficult to read._

_What Discord is describing that they're doing to him is horrible, Princess. We have to rescue him._

_I am confident that the document is really from Discord and is sincere. I am sure you will want to read it for yourself before authorizing a rescue mission, and I don't know the best way to go about that anyway. It sounds like the evil versions of us still have their Elements, so I'm not sure if we would be the most effective rescuers, ourselves, or if you have a special team of ponies that does that kind of thing, or how you want to handle it. _

_Let me know when you're prepared to receive a multi-page document. I'll send you Spike's copy because it's easier to read._

_Sincerely,_

_Your former student, Princess Twilight Sparkle_

She watched as Spike scrawled a PS at the bottom. _PS: This is Spike. Twilight is not joking. I was up all night deciphering and copying that document and it was so awful I don't want to go to sleep even though I'm really tired._ Then he breathed on it, and it burned, vanishing.

Expecting that the Princess might respond quickly, Twilight started putting the pages of Spike's copy back together in order, because she'd left them somewhat scattered while she read it. The response came back before she'd organized more than three sheets.

_Dear Twilight,_

_Please send me the original document. I can read Discord's writing._

_Celestia_

Spike looked at the note in bemusement. "Um... does she _know_ what she's getting into? I mean, probably his writing's always bad, but right now..."

Twilight shrugged. "She's the Princess. If she ends up wanting the second document instead, we can send it then. She probably wants to verify for herself that it really is from Discord."

Spike breathed on the stacked pile of sheets that had been Discord's original letter, and then grinned with relief. "Oh, good. That tasted _so_ bad coming up, I was worried about what it might taste like when I burned it to send it back out."

Twilight finished reorganizing Spike's copy of the letter. "We can't let Fluttershy read this," she said.

Spike nodded. "Yeah. I don't think anypony should read this except Princess Celestia, really. I kinda wish I hadn't had to read it, but it was so weird looking, I was afraid it was like some kind of magical necromancy mind control document and if you read it it would take over your brain, so I wanted to make sure it was safe first. And then I saw the part about the other me, uh, killing Discord, except I didn't even know it was Discord yet, so then I had to read the whole thing."

"Well, I think you did a great job, Spike. I saw what a mess that document was. I can understand why he wrote on both sides of the paper if he had to use his own skin to make paper with, but it made it really hard to read even if it was printed neatly, and it wasn't."

"He changed hands," Spike said. "More than once. He was usually writing with his talon but then sometimes the letters got all fat and fuzzy and they started to point the other way, and the paper gets smeary when that happens."

"Maybe his talon just got tired," Twilight said, suspecting very strongly that that wasn't the reason, and that Spike had the same suspicion. If they allowed Discord the ability to heal himself, but only when they commanded him to, how many times might they have broken that limb? Discord's talon was both more fragile looking and more dexterous and useful to him than his paw. Anypony who was torturing him, who was aware that snapping his talon was his primary method of channeling his magic, would probably see that limb as a target, because breaking his primary forelimb would make him feel more helpless.

How did she know these things? Twilight took a shaky breath. She was a researcher, a student of magic and history. She'd read so much, but she hadn't realized she knew as much as she did about torture and what it was used for and how it worked until she read Discord's letter, and realized that she understood why their counterparts were probably using those strategies. Which suggested to her, awfully, that it was her counterpart who was orchestrating this.

What _had_ her counterpart done to herself to turn evil? Discord hadn't known; he'd said the spell his alternate had cast on the Elements had only affected the other five, and that whatever it was that had happened to the Element of Magic, the alternate Twilight had done it to herself so she could harmonize with the other Elements again.

Or was it what she'd done to herself at all? She remembered how broken she'd felt when Discord had destroyed her friendships. What if that had _lasted?_ Could she have turned into this, a mare who could justify torture and mind control, out of a desire for vengeance? She didn't want to think so; she wanted to think it was a spell gone wrong. But how would incorporating the opposite of Magic into her element make her into this? What was the opposite of Magic anyway?

"You did a good job," Twilight said again. "I wish you hadn't read any of that, though. Spike, you're so young; you shouldn't have had to be exposed to something like that..."

"I'm not gonna disagree," Spike said. "But... I'm not really a _baby,_ like a baby baby, Twilight. I mean, maybe dragons my age are babies because we live so long, but I've been living with ponies. I don't think my body's grown much in a few years, but I feel like my mind has. It's kinda frustrating, actually."

"Yeah, you're not a baby, even if you technically are," Twilight said. "But you're still my dragon baby. I don't want you to have to see things like this."

"But I'm also your number one assistant."

"Right." She sighed. "Which, I guess, means that some of the terrible things I have to see, you'll end up seeing too. I wish I could protect you better, but I guess I can't."

Spike put a hand to his mouth. "I think Princess Celestia's replying."

He belched out a scroll. Twilight caught it and opened it.

_Dear Twilight,_

_Please gather the Bearers of the Elements, and Spike, and come to Canterlot immediately. _

_I do understand that you no longer carry the physical representations of the Elements and cannot use them to spellcast, but you still bear them in your hearts, so forgive me for continuing to refer to you as such._

_I am going to attempt to reach your brother and Cadance in hopes that they may be able to provide support, but they have their own realm to govern and protect, so I don't think it is likely._

_Don't attempt to teleport. Although this matter is urgent, it is also very important that you preserve your stores of magic to the greatest extent possible. I believe you will need them._

_Sincerely,_

_Celestia_

She didn't sign "Princess Celestia" anymore. Probably because Twilight was a princess herself.

"Ok. Spike, take letters. Owlowliscious, please wake up, I need you to take a letter to Fluttershy. Spike, you run the letters to Rarity and Pinkie Pie; I'll run one out to Applejack and see if I can find Ditzy to take one out to Rainbow Dash, since the Princess wants me to conserve my magic."

"Right." Spike pulled out his quill and a pile of blank scrolls. "Short notes, right?"

"Yes. First note, to go to Fluttershy. _"Fluttershy, Please come meet me and the others at the library. We think we have a lead on Discord, and it sounds like he's in trouble. -Twilight Sparkle"_

"Sounds like he's in trouble?" Spike said skeptically as he wrote. "Isn't that kind of understating things?"

"I'm not going to tell her he's in an alternate dimension being tortured by an evil version of her," Twilight snapped. "Not... in a letter, anyway. We can explain everything once everypony's here."

Owlowliscious took the note in his beak and flew off. Hurriedly, Twilight gave Spike dictation on the rest of the notes. If Discord had been over there for two months, he could probably survive another day or two, but she felt a sense of almost panicked urgency. He wasn't her friend, not really, in fact he thought she hated him... but he was genuinely Fluttershy's friend. For her sake – and for his, because nothing he had ever done that she knew of could possibly justify what he was enduring – she wanted, _needed_, to save him.

* * *

**Harmony, 9 AM**

In Canterlot, the Princess of the Sun calmly cancelled her morning court, firmly and peaceably dismissed her guards, locked herself in her study with the blood-soaked document, and then, when no pony could see her any longer... she broke down and wept.

* * *

_**Notes:** _

_This story is in the same continuity as "The Last Draconequus", "Princess Twilight Sparkle Endcaps" and "Elements of Opposition." The fic sequence for this particular continuity goes like this:_

_**Last Draconequus** and related fics: Discord's childhood and history_

_**Awkward Conversations:** Post "Keep Calm and Flutter On", pre-Alicorn Twilight. Discord has conversations with several other characters. Most of them do not go well._

_**Princess Twilight Sparkle Endcaps:**_

_- **Vines:** Pre-"Princess Twilight Sparkle". Discord decides to help with the vines. Mostly._

_- **Detente:** Post-"Princess Twilight Sparkle". Zecora comes to Discord with an offer from the Tree of Harmony, and some advice._

_**Light Rain**: Discord has something to show Fluttershy. Bridge between "Princess Twilight Sparkle Endcaps" and "Elements of Opposition"._

_**Elements of Opposition (series):**_

_- **Discord in Hell (Not Literally):** Discord travels to an alternate universe to wreak entertaining havoc, and picks the wrong one. After being enslaved with twisted versions of the Elements of Harmony that his now-dead counterpart had corrupted, thus corrupting their Bearers, Discord writes a desperate plea for help._

_- **Twilight Sparkle's Report On The Entropic Gradient:** Technically happens before "Discord in Hell". The corrupted Twilight Sparkle outlines her plan for Discord to her version of Princess Celestia._

_- **Dragonfire and Sympathy:** The alternate Spike is trying not to have any sympathy for Discord._

_- **World Without Harmony:** Stories of the alternate universe._

_- **Elements of Opposition:** The Mane 6 from the regular universe go on a mission to rescue Discord from the alternate universe._

_These are not hyperlinked because fanfiction dot net strips hyperlinks, but all of them either are or soon will be available on my author page._


	2. The Mission

**Opposition, 7 AM**

The dirt crawlspace dug out under the giant tree was never very well lit. There were two small gaps in the roots that formed the ceiling, which had been covered with metal lattices to allow light and air in, but they were on the west side of the tree, so no direct sunlight ever came through except in the afternoon, because Celestia had no imagination and would always make the sun track from east to west. No version of Celestia he'd ever met had enough of a sense of humor to make the sun rise in a different quadrant of the sky, and this version was more humorless than most. So the space was usually quite dark and dank; sunlight and moonlight shone through the two small gaps enough that the darkness wasn't usually total, but it was dim enough to have made it a challenge to write that letter.

It was gone now, off to its destination, hopefully. Discord had expected to feel a sense of accomplishment, of achievement, and he _had_ last night, the moment Spike sent the thing, right before the nausea had overwhelmed him and he'd thrown up. But the feeling hadn't lasted. Discord lifted his head to stare up at the lightening sky through the tiny, sad excuses for windows in his cell, and felt a sense of emptiness and hopelessness. It was out of his paws now; there was nothing more he could do to try to save himself, and the truth was, he didn't believe it would be enough. The likelihood that his Twilight would care, or even believe him, was so low.

His whole body ached; Fluttercruel had allowed him to heal himself after Twilight's experiments yesterday, but without the ability to discorporate into some completely different form and then rebuild himself from scratch, there was a limit to what chaos magic could do. Chaos couldn't heal, it could only transform; Discord was an expert at finding loopholes in anything, including chaos, so his entire life he'd been healing himself with transformation magic, but low-level transformation could only do so much, and he wasn't allowed to perform a total transformation, so he ached all the time, even when he was as whole as he ever got to be anymore. Discord lowered his head back to the dirt floor, hearing the rattling of the metal chain as it clattered back onto the dirt. He'd tried pulling at it with all his strength, but it was deeply rooted – literally; it was deep under the dirt and fastened through one of the giant tree's huge underground taproots, so it wasn't coming up without a team of earth ponies with shovels, or magic, or preferably both, and the collar around his neck that it was fastened to prevented him from wielding that magic.

_I'm never going to get out of here_, he thought, and closed his eyes tightly, clenching his paws into fists as if he could crush the thought. He couldn't think that way. If he let himself give up hope completely, he'd snap.

The door upstairs creaked open. Discord cringed, flattening himself against the floor before he could stop himself. Stupid, really, what good was that going to do him?

"Wake up, sleepyhead!" Fluttercruel's voice caroled. "Rise and shine, it's time for breakfast!"

Despite his hunger, Discord felt dread. _Please let it be edible. Please, please, please, let it be actual food this time, please._ Yesterday's breakfast had been three eggs. Which would have been wonderful, except that they were raw. And in their shells. Which hadn't been cleaned, so they were covered with bird feces. And it had turned out they were over a month old and rotten. And when he'd tried to balk at eating them once he'd realized they were rotten, Fluttercruel had ordered him to, so he'd had no choice. Filthy shells and all. Then she'd punished him for trying to refuse.

First she'd broken his talon by making him stretch it out on the dirt floor and then hitting it repeatedly with a small hammer, until the bones shattered. Most of Discord's bones weren't bones at all but soft cartilage, and extremely flexible, but this wasn't the case with the bones in his paws or wings because they needed some strength and firmness in order to work, and that made them breakable. He'd been scheduled to spend his morning helping Rarity, and he needed both paws in presentable condition for that, so Fluttercruel had had to order him to heal himself, eventually. But she'd spent many long minutes letting him cry and whimper with pain while she lectured him on why he shouldn't try to refuse his orders before finally letting him heal.

Then, when it was late afternoon and Rarity was closing up for the day, Fluttercruel had taken him with her on her trip to a dairy farm. She'd purchased milk, then brought him out to the cowpen and asked him if he wanted some. When he'd said yes – he'd known that nothing good was likely to come of it, but the honesty spell on him gave him no choice but to admit it – she had poured a cup, then ordered him to eat a pat of cow manure and told him that if he did it quickly enough she'd give him the milk. He knew how this game was played, he knew she wasn't playing in good faith and that this was just an excuse to torment him, he obeyed because the spell on him forced him to and not because he actually believed she'd give him anything when he was done, but even still, a little part of him had shriveled up and died inside him when he'd finished and Fluttercruel had declared he hadn't been fast enough, and then poured the cup of milk out onto the ground in front of him.

He hadn't been given anything else to eat, all day, and after the effort of _not_ telling Spike that the letter he was begging Spike to send would go to his cognate in Discord's home universe rather than to the Celestia of this one, which had made him acutely nauseous and forced him to throw up all the disgusting things he'd been forced to eat that day... for all intents and purposes it was as if he hadn't eaten since the day before yesterday. He was so agonizingly hungry... but he whimpered quietly in fear of what awfulness Fluttercruel might have decided to make him eat today.

"Here you go!" She carried a bowl of plain hay in her forehooves as she fluttered over to him, using her wings for locomotion. "Some nice hay for you."

Discord was part pony. He _could_ eat hay. It was the most boring possible food in existence, so he didn't like it, but it wasn't rotten and it wasn't fecal matter, it was actual edible food, so he dove at it. His sensitive nose caught a whiff of what Fluttercruel had done to the hay the moment before he bit into it. Discord didn't let his face change expression, but inside he was smiling fiercely. This trick, at least, he could handle.

He devoured the hay in two gulps and a slurp of the tongue to catch whatever he missed, cleaning the bowl out completely. The large quantity of hot sauce that Fluttercruel had laced it with, puddles of the stuff lying under the top layers of the hay where he'd easily smelled it but hadn't been able to see it, were a pleasant burn, clearing his sinuses and helping him become fully alert despite his exhaustion. In fact the hot spice made the hay far more palatable to him than ordinary boring hay without any kind of spice would have been. Even without his powers, Discord could handle any quantity of hot sauce. But Fluttercruel didn't know that, obviously, or she wouldn't have tried this trick. So as soon as he'd finished eating, he mimed being overwhelmed by the hot spice, panting, gasping, letting his tongue hang out of his mouth, and begging Fluttercruel in a choked voice for water, which she denied him, laughing. "Oh no, silly, no water for you right now. You need to earn your keep, after all."

Discord had known she would do that, of course. He really _did_ want water; he'd been feeling dehydrated when he woke up, even before the hot sauce-laced hay. But he wasn't in nearly as dire straits as he was pretending. If Fluttercruel thought that something he found a mild annoyance at worst and actually pleasant at best was a harsh torture he could barely endure, she would likely inflict it on him again, in lieu of the tortures he really couldn't endure. Of course he couldn't _say_ he found the spice unendurable, because it wasn't true, but he'd found that the spell didn't prevent him from using his body language to lie. It didn't even make him nauseous when he did. As long as he made no attempt to speak a lie or to speak a technically true statement that was so misleading it was essentially a lie, the honesty spell didn't harm him.

It wasn't enough, of course. She never gave him enough to make him stop feeling hungry. When she'd chained him up for the night and he was in too much pain to fall asleep right away, he generally spent the time fantasizing about food. Candied apples, mountains of ice cream, warm mustard-filled donuts chock full of cracker bits, cheese and lollipop tops, pie soup, oyster-flavored bananas, mozzarella mushroom muffins, hot sizzling barbequed rutabagas that tasted like Gryphonian grilled steaks with cream cheese barbeque sauce, hearty crunchy tableware... it was probably foolish of him to do it and it probably made his hunger worse but he couldn't stop. When he hadn't been working on his letter and he hadn't been sleeping and he hadn't been thinking despairing thoughts about what would likely happen to him the next day and how little hope he had to ever get out of here, he had been lost in elaborate daydreams about food, inventing entirely new recipes in his head, savoring imaginary tastes and lingering over the imagery of flying rowboats laden with delicious dishes, and equally delicious food on top of the dishes, all for him.

Sometimes when he was bleeding and his skin was torn and she didn't let him heal himself right away, he'd lick the blood or tear off the skin and eat it, and once or twice he'd even bitten large chunks of flesh out of his own tail and eaten them, because his tail had been beaten so badly it was practically ground meat anyway and the pain of biting into his own flesh where the pain was already so bad he could barely stand it was still less than the agony of his hunger. Also, because he knew that either he'd be ordered to heal himself at some point, or he'd bleed to death, so one way or another no matter how badly he further mutilated his tail he wasn't going to have to live with it indefinitely.

"All done with your breakfast?" Fluttercruel asked cheerily, and pointlessly, because at this point the bowl was completely empty.

"Yes," Discord mumbled, tiredly, wishing there was more hay in the bowl.

"Discord, that's not very respectful. _How_ do you address me?"

He sagged against the ground in utter humiliation. "Yes, mistress, I'm done," he said, forcing himself to speak loudly enough that she wouldn't force him to repeat himself. "What do you want me to do today?"

"Well, Applejack could use the help. So let's head over there."

He followed her out of the basement, putting one limb in front of the other in a dull routine pattern, trying very hard not to think about the future. Going to Applejack's almost invariably meant being beaten at least once. Well, it could be worse. It could be Twilight. Unbidden, his mind went back to the experiments she'd performed on him last night, and the agony he'd endured. No. No, Twilight was a slave to Order. Every three days and then every four days. Clockwork. He had four more days before he needed to suffer under Twilight's hooves again.

At least Applejack got started early in the morning. On some of the days when he was supposed to help in Rarity's shop or when Fluttercruel kept him here to help her, the day's work either started late enough, or he remained in proximity to Fluttercruel long enough, to give her the opportunity to demand that he satisfy her in the morning, and given that she usually required pain, humiliation and submission from him before she'd be satisfied, those mornings were bad. Applejack was almost certainly going to hurt him, but not in the particularly horrible ways Fluttercruel usually inflicted on him.

"Let's give your wings a little stretch," Fluttercruel said. There were two rings in each of his wings, surrounding the upper bones and piercing through the thin flesh underneath. She unclipped them from the harness buckled around his body. "You can go ahead and give them a little flap, but no flying unless Applejack tells you to." They burned with the ache of having been bound in one place too long. It almost hurt more that she'd unbound them and ordered him to use them, but it was still a relief to be able to stretch them out.

He wondered how she was going to make him pay for this particular small mercy. Maybe just the fact that they were free, that he could theoretically fly away despite the leash because he could outfly Fluttercruel, and the obedience spell wouldn't allow him to. Sometimes Fluttercruel seemed to revel in giving him the appearance of freedom, when both of them knew perfectly well that he wasn't actually free at all. He'd pulled that particular stunt on ponies often enough to know that it was sometimes very amusing to pretend that your victim was free to do as they liked.

Fluttercruel was in many ways worse than he ever was – he'd never raped anypony and he'd never employed unrestrained torture, preferring to put most of his focus into the psychological variety because mere pain was just boring – but she used many of his more sophisticated techniques as well. It hurt, seeing himself and the things he'd done in her behavior, experiencing for himself what his victims must have felt and knowing that this particular singular torment, at least, was one he deserved, even if he was still managing to hold tight to his belief that he didn't deserve most of what he suffered here.

"Now, don't forget," Fluttercruel said cheerily as she fastened a leash to his collar. "Don't let anything damage your collar today!"

She said it every day. He suspected that if she left it open ended, a command to never damage the collar, the force of the command would eventually wear off and he'd be able to free himself. But because she repeated the command every day, he never had a chance. In the early days when they'd first enslaved him, Fluttercruel had told him not to damage his collar, so he had looked for elaborate workarounds that would permit other ponies or inanimate objects to damage or destroy the collar. After he'd deliberately tripped and fallen neck first into a bonfire on the logic that either it would burn his collar off and free him to use his magic, thus allowing him to heal the burns, or he'd burn to death and be free of this torture, Fluttercruel had figured out his game and had rephrased the command so that there were no more loopholes.

"I won't forget," he said dully, because it was true, the spell wouldn't let him.

Fluttercruel stepped into the hoof-end of the leash, shook her leg so the hoof ring would slide up and catch tightly, and walked forward. Discord followed her out of the house into bright sunlight, trying desperately to convince himself that today wouldn't be so bad, that it could be worse, that he'd be able to endure it. He knew he was lying to himself, of course, but he needed to.

* * *

**Harmony, 10 AM**

"This is the situation," Twilight said.

It had been difficult to refrain from giving explanations prematurely, particularly since Fluttershy had been the first to arrive, almost before Twilight had gotten back to the library herself, and she had been pleading with Twilight for information. But this was the kind of thing you didn't want to have to talk about twice.

"Last night Spike got a letter from Discord. It was in really bad condition, so he copied it out and sent the original to Princess Celestia. In the letter, Discord says that he went to an alternate universe – like that portal I went through to get the Element of Magic back from Sunset Shimmer, except this one seems to be more like ours, where all the ponies that are here are there as well."

"Hey, is this like that alternate universe Daring Do went to in issue 29 of the comics, where she had to team up with Ahuizotl because he was a good guy there to defeat herself because she was evil?" Rainbow Dash asked.

Twilight almost face-hooved – as if what happened in a comic book could have anything to do with a serious situation like this! – and then realized that, actually, Rainbow couldn't have picked a better example if she'd tried. "Almost exactly. It sounds like it's not quite entirely like that – like maybe at one point the good ponies were still good, and maybe most of them still are – but _we_ are evil there. The six of us."

"Evil?" Rarity cried. "Oh my dear! Does the alternate version of me force ponies to wear _plaid?_"

"Is it like when Discord messed with us and I'm all like 'argh I hate you all you're laughing at me' and Applejack's like 'snicker snicker no I'm not' and Fluttershy's all 'I _am_ laughing at you cause you're stupid' and Rarity's in love with Tom?" Pinkie Pie asked.

"Pinkie! I thought we agreed never to speak of that again!" Rarity said.

"Kind of," Twilight said, ignoring Rarity. "But a lot worse."

"Worse?" Applejack said skeptically. "What's worse'n what Discord made us into?"

Twilight took a deep breath. "I'm – I'm going to get to it. Let me finish. He said, he went to that universe because he wanted to make chaos and he was afraid Fluttershy would be mad at him if he did it here, so he went to a universe where all of us, and maybe all the ponies, are all still there, but where the other him was dead. It turns out, the other him is dead because the other Spike killed him."

"Spike is evil too?" Rarity exclaimed melodramatically, and fell over backward in a faint. Spike shoved a chair behind her to catch her, in the absence of her fainting couch.

"Wow," Rainbow said. "Spike, _you_ killed Discord? That's... I don't know whether that's scary or awesome. Maybe both!"

"It's not awesome," Spike said. "The other me did it while he was a statue, with some special magic sledgehammer. I don't know why he did it, because Discord's letter didn't say, but I can guess."

"As can I," Twilight said. "The alternate Discord corrupted the Elements of Harmony themselves. Not just _us_, but the actual Elements. And it sounds like he didn't reverse them so much as he fused them with their opposites. So all of us are weird combinations of our true selves and our opposite selves, at the same time, and that's what turned us evil."

"Like what're we doing that's evil?" Applejack asked skeptically. "'Cause if the alternate Discord's dead... ain't like being a liar would've ever made me wanna take over Equestria or something."

"Like torture," Twilight said.

Pinkie Pie's eyes went huge. "_Torture?_ Like... us? We're torturing ponies?"

Twilight nodded. "Discord's been taken prisoner by these alternate versions of us, and they're... they're torturing him. And I don't mean the kind of thing all of us except Fluttershy have probably wished to do to Discord at some point, not like smacking him or bucking him into a wall or something. I mean... torture. I... I don't even want to describe it. He sent the letter because he wants us to rescue him."

Fluttershy had said nothing since Twilight began to talk. Now, the silence following Twilight's last words were broken by a sob from the gentle pegasus. Fluttershy sat down on the floor heavily, without any of her usual grace, and covered her face with her hooves, crying quietly. "I knew he was in trouble," she whispered, barely loudly enough for Twilight to hear her. "I knew it..."

Rainbow Dash knelt down beside her fellow pegasus, putting an arm around her. "Hey, Flutters. It's gonna be okay." She looked up and scowled. "Uh, exactly how are ponies like us torturing Discord? Last I checked, he was like super powerful and without the Elements, we've never been able to do _anything_ to him."

"It sounds like the other me found a different way to use the Elements," Twilight said. "She cast an obedience spell on him."

"An obedience spell?" Rarity cried, and promptly fainted again. Twilight rolled her eyes.

"Does an obedience spell do what it sounds like?" Applejack asked.

"It makes a pony into a slave," Twilight said. "It's an abomination. The spell's forbidden, it's the kind of thing you'd expect somepony like King Sombra to use, not... not _me._ Under an obedience spell..." She swallowed. "The pony under the spell can still think and feel for themselves, but they can't disobey an order. The one controlling the spell could make them put their hoof in a fire, or, or jump in a lake and drown themselves, and they'd have to do it. An ordinary obedience spell would never work on Discord, he's much too powerful... but the other me channeled the spell through the Elements, like that summoning spell the Princess taught me that we used to call Discord when his vines were all over the place.

"But, my dear," Rarity said, back from her brief faint already and fanning herself until Spike took the fan from her and began eagerly performing the job himself, "why would anypony ever need to torture somepony under an obedience spell? I'm hardly the student of magic you are, but I remember reading about those in my magic lessons. If somepony's compelled to do anything you tell them to, why would you torture them?"

"Maybe because you're evil," Rainbow Dash said. "I mean... if we're evil... I'm a _hero_ and I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to buck Discord in the face. If I was evil and I could order him to stand still for it... I mean the only reason I _wouldn't_ want to do that is that it's wrong and evil, and if I was evil I wouldn't care, I guess."

"What kind of parties would an evil me have?" Pinkie asked nopony in particular. "Like, would I decorate everything in black? Or not send out enough invitations, so some ponies wouldn't get them and they'd get upset? Or use punch that was going bad so everypony got food poisoning?"

Twilight did not want to explain to Pinkie what Discord had implied about her alter ego. "Discord says he thinks they're trying to brainwash him," she said. "The obedience spell can force him to obey, but we know how good Discord is at finding loopholes. He says he thinks they're conditioning him to obey unquestioningly, to be so afraid of disobedience that he won't look for loopholes anymore, and then they'll be able to make him use his magic to do anything they want. He also says they think he's the one from their universe, which might explain how the other me would stoop to casting an obedience spell, except I don't care what they think he did, there's absolutely no good excuse for... for the things he says they're doing."

"And you believe him, sugarcube?" Applejack asked.

Twilight nodded. "I do."

"Yeah," Spike said. "I checked over the document itself really carefully and it all tied out. Like he said he was making the paper he was writing it on out of tree bark and his own skin, with transformation magic, and there were places where I found the paper was rough like bark or it had Discord's scales in it..." He stopped abruptly at the look of utter horror from Fluttershy. "Uh. So, yeah. Twilight and I think he's telling the truth."

"You mind if I take a look at this letter for myself?"

Rainbow Dash snorted. "Like you could tell if Discord was lying," she said. "I know you can usually tell if somepony's lying, but you've never been able to tell with Discord before."

Applejack rolled her eyes. "The reason I can't generally tell if Discord's being honest is that he never is. He's _always_ setting off my 'this is a load of horseapples' meter, but I can't generally tell about exactly what, cause he mixes up lies and truth and he tells the truth like it's a lie or he uses a truth to tell a lie and it's such a big mess of confusion, I can't tell which way's up. A thing like this, though, it feels like either it's all gotta be a lie, because it's some kind of joke or evil plan, or it's all gotta be the truth, and I figure maybe I can tell which."

Twilight smiled nervously, shuffling slightly in place. "Um... Well... The thing is..."

"We sent the letter to Princess Celestia already," Spike said.

"But you said you made a copy, Spike," Applejack said. "I don't need to read the original. Honesty ain't in ink and paper, it's in words."

Twilight sighed. "Discord sent the letter to me," she explained. "So he knew I was going to read it. And he knew Spike would because he sent it through Spike. And I'm sure he knew that I would send it to Princess Celestia. But I don't know if he would be all right with me sharing it with anypony else."

"Seems to me, if I was being tortured and I wanted somepony to come rescue me, I wouldn't care who-all read my call for help, so long as it ended up they came to help me."

"But you're not the kind to keep things to yourself for the sake of your pride. Some of the things Discord says in this letter... he says he's under a spell that forces him to tell the truth, and if it's not the complete truth, he'll throw up, and because of that he says some things that he didn't even want to tell _me_, but the spell made him do it."

"Um... if it helps to make sure that everypony believes him... I think Discord would be okay with Applejack reading it," Fluttershy said softly. "I know he doesn't think any of us trust him except for me—"

"Yeah, well, why would we?" Rainbow Dash asked. "He lied to our faces about those vines!"

"I'm, um, I'm not saying you're wrong to mistrust him... I'm just saying, he knows about it. If, if he's really in trouble, I think he would be okay with Applejack reading about it, if it means that we believe him..."

"All right," Twilight said. If Applejack saw something she and Spike had missed, some way this could all be some kind of elaborate awful prank, she needed to know. And if Discord was as sincere as Twilight felt he was, Applejack would pick up on it, and the others would trust Applejack's assessment of Discord's honesty more than they'd trust such an assessment from anypony else except maybe the princess. "But, Applejack... it's awful. It's really awful."

"Maybe so, but I gotta see for myself anyway," Applejack said. She sat down at Twilight's desk so she could use her hooves to move the pages, and Spike handed her the document.

"What are we going to do, Twilight?" Fluttershy asked, as Applejack was reading. "We _are_ going to help him, aren't we?"

"We're going to Canterlot to talk with Princess Celestia, once Applejack finishes," Twilight said. "She said the six of us, plus Spike, need to meet with her there. She also said she was going to try to get hold of Shiny and Cadance."

"Oh my!" Rarity raised her eyebrows. "So Princess Celestia is taking this quite seriously."

"Yes, I think so," Twilight said.

Pinkie had said almost nothing, at least not in comparison to her usual exuberance. Now she said, apropos of nothing, "I never gave him a party." Her eyes were wide, and... welling with tears?

"You most certainly did," Rarity said.

"Yeah, it's not your fault he skipped out on you and you had to change it to a 'Hooray for Fluttershy Reforming Discord' party!" Rainbow said.

Pinkie shook her head. "I was always going to have a real one, but not until he earned it. Because he was trying to break the _rule._"

Rarity gasped. "He broke a Pinkie Promise?"

"No, not that rule. _Nopony_ breaks a Pinkie Promise," Pinkie said. "He said you guys weren't really his friends. Just Fluttershy."

"Well, duh," Rainbow said. "Kind of obvious, don't you think?"

"Is that why you said you weren't his friend?" Twilight asked.

"I said I wasn't going to be his friend but I wasn't _not_ going to be his friend," Pinkie explained, which explained nothing. "Because he wanted to be friends with me. He came to me to apologize but he apologized about the wrong thing! And he wants to be my friend, but he doesn't want to be friends with my friends, and he's said he's sorry for what he did to me in the maze but it's not because of me, it's because he likes Laughter, and he's not sorry about any of the rest of you except Fluttershy and I said well then you can't be my friend! The rule is, if you're going to be my friend you have to be friends with my friends, and if you're going to be sorry for making me a big meaniepants it doesn't mean anything if you aren't sorry for doing it to my friends too! And he said but you wouldn't ever be his friends because you hated him and I said but did you even _try_ and he said there wasn't any point in trying and that Twilight thinks he's the worst kind of stallion there is, which honestly he isn't even a stallion really because he's not a pony, he's a draconequuthingy and I don't even know what you call them when they're male, but anyway he wouldn't tell me what he meant by that but I said well if you're not even going to try to be friends with my friends then I can't be your friend until you're friends with my friends and that's why I'm not gonna throw you a party. But I was always going to _someday!_ I was sure he would come around eventually, because you're all such nice ponies, and I was going to... as soon as he could really be sorry for messing with all of us and not just me and Fluttershy and as soon as he could really be a friend, not just say he is to your faces and then say to me that none of you are really his friend because you hate him... I knew he could do it someday, I knew Fluttershy was working on him so I had to be the bad cop even though I don't like that because he has to know that sometimes being a friend means being friends with your friends' friends, and I had the party all planned in my head for whenever that was going to be..." She flung her arms around Twilight with a sob. "BUT WHAT IF HE NEVER COMES BACK? What if we can't rescue him, or what if the evil us, they, they... what if he never comes back?"

Awkwardly Twilight extricated herself from the sobbing Pinkie Pie, handing her over to Fluttershy, who was equally distraught. There were times that Pinkie seemed bizarrely inappropriate, like she lived in an entirely different world, and when she'd first started talking about not giving Discord a party Twilight had thought that this was one of those times. But the party was just a symbol. Pinkie wasn't crying over the fact that she might never be able to hold a party for Discord, she was crying over the fact that for some reason, she had seen a greater potential in him than anypony but Fluttershy had, and he might not live to realize that potential.

And possibly for the fact that she'd held back her friendship, something she normally gave to anypony at all, from someone who'd actually sought it, because she'd been trying to teach him to be a better friend, and now she might never have a chance. It actually somewhat surprised Twilight that Pinkie _had_ tried being the "bad cop" with Discord; she was normally so relentlessly cheerful, so impossible to offend or depress. Naturally, she had probably only been able to bring herself to do it because she'd believed that she _could_ teach him that way, that he could improve if she held out on him... and if he didn't survive this or they couldn't rescue him, she'd have to live with rejecting friendship from somepony who'd offered it without ever achieving the goal she'd been trying to accomplish by doing that.

"Now, Pinkie, I'm sure Princess Celestia will have a strategy," Rarity said. "I'm... sure she wouldn't abandon anypony in such dire straits, not even Discord."

"One way or another, we're going to help him, Pinkie," Twilight said. "He's a jerk, but he's _our_ jerk, and he – and he doesn't deserve what they're doing to him. Nopony would."

Applejack stood up, pushing the chair back from the desk. Spike had been hovering by her, pointing out various features of Discord's original document that weren't present in his copy. "I've read all I need to," she said shakily.

"And?" Rainbow asked.

"And I think this ain't no prank or twisted up plan of some kind. I feel like, probably he ain't being entirely honest about what all he did over there – he talks about it like it was nothing, and ten to one I bet ya it was the kinda thing where if he did it here we'd've been trying to talk Fluttershy into helping us put him back in stone. But that is _no_ justification for what they're doing... and in my opinion, if there's anything he ain't being honest about when he talks about what they're doing to him, I think he's holding _back_ on how bad it is." She took a deep breath. "I also think Twilight's right, nopony else should read this thing. It's bad to read about terrible things like this happening to somepony you know, even if you don't much like him, but it's much, much worse to read about _yourself_ doing those things. I'm gonna have nightmares about this for a long time now."

Twilight felt a mixture of relief and sorrow. It was good to know that the Bearer of Honesty agreed with her own assessment of Discord's truthfulness in the letter. But if he'd been lying, then she could have been angry with him for playing a cruel prank or whatever it would have been. If he was telling the truth... then all those horrible things really were happening to him, and they were being done by versions of herself and her friends.

"So you believe him?" Rainbow still looked skeptical.

"I surely do," Applejack said.

"Okay then! If you trust that he's telling the truth, that's good enough for me."

"And me," Rarity said. "Not that I ever doubted my little Spikey-Wikey, but it is good to get an independent opinion." Spike grinned in exactly the same way a dog being scritched would wag its tail. Twilight half expected him to start wagging his. _At least this portal, we'll all get to stay our own species,_ she thought.

"Well then!" Pinkie shouted. "What are we waiting for? Let's get to the train and go see Princess Celestia!"

"Yes," Twilight said. "Let's go."

* * *

**Harmony, 12 PM**

Celestia's seneschal offered the Bearers refreshment while they waited for Celestia to dismiss the Solar Court for lunch. The sandwiches looked positively delicious, and the cookies delectable, but Twilight had no appetite. She drank the apple juice that had been put out for them, noting with a bit of vicarious pride that it was obviously Applejack's family's own product, and watched her friends, with the exception of Fluttershy, scarf down the food.

"Fluttershy," she said softly. "Are you okay? Maybe you should eat something."

Fluttershy shook her head. "I couldn't eat right now. What about you? Shouldn't you eat?"

"No appetite," Twilight said.

Fluttershy looked as if she was going to cry again. "It's... it's really... bad?" she whispered. "Is he – if we rescue him – _when_ we rescue him, do you... what kind of medical treatment do you think he'll need? Because I'll pack my whole kit if I need to..."

That was good. That was Fluttershy focusing on what she could do to help, not crumpling up in grief because of what was happening to her friend. "I don't know what we might need," Twilight said. "Painkillers, antiseptics and bandages, I guess. Maybe... some material for splinting. He says they leave him a little bit of his magic to heal himself with, but he said he heals himself with transformation magic, so that's not going to work well if he has only a little bit of it."

"What does that mean? Healing versus transformation magic?"

"Well, healing magic focuses on fixing a body back to its natural state, of course. It's a type of harmonic magic, like most of the magic unicorns do. Discord doesn't use harmonic magic, and by its fundamental nature chaos can't _fix_ things, so he probably doesn't have access to healing magic at all. Theoretically, you can use transformation magic to heal by transforming a body from an injured state to an uninjured state. Like, if I turn you into a gecko, and then I turn you back into a pony, when I turn you back into a pony I don't restore you to how you were before you were a gecko, I restore you to your ur-state, your fundamental Fluttershyness, so if you had a broken wing before I made you a gecko... geckos don't have wings. When I turn you back into a pegasus, you don't get the broken wing you had before, you get the unbroken wing that nature says you should have, because that's where I'm getting the pattern to make you back into yourself. You see?"

"Not entirely but a little bit..."

"So Discord can heal any injury by just transforming himself back into his uninjured state. But transformation magic takes a _lot_ more power than healing does... which might not be a problem for Discord, because generally speaking getting chaotic magic to do what you want it to do takes a lot more power than using harmonic magic, but that might not be an issue for him because of his affinity with Chaos... but on the other hand he's not used to having limited quantities of power..." Abruptly Twilight realized that Fluttershy's eyes were glazing over. "Oh! Sorry. The point is, using transformation magic to heal isn't efficient and uses a lot of power, so he _might_ not be able to heal himself very well."

The bugle of the herald cut off any reply Fluttershy might have made. "Princess Celestia!" the herald shouted, as if everypony in the room didn't know exactly who was walking through the large doors.

By habit, Twilight bowed. Celestia laughed gently. "There's no need for that, my little ponies." She looked at her herald. "Bugle Blue, I don't require so much pomp and circumstance with these ponies. These ponies, and this young dragon, are heroes of Equestria, my loyal and faithful servants, and among their number is our newest princess, Princess Twilight Sparkle. They do not require such ceremony."

The herald turned red and stammered. "I – I'm sorry, your Highness..."

"It was a simple mistake, and no harm was done," Celestia said. "Simply remember in future."

"I – I will."

She looked at Twilight and her friends. "If everyone has had a chance to have some lunch, let us go to a more private chamber to talk."

"These sandwiches are great, Princess!" Rainbow said. She grabbed an extra one to munch on as they headed for the chamber.

Twilight noticed Pinkie sticking an entire tray of sandwiches in her mane, where it disappeared. "Pinkie, what are you doing?"

"You and Fluttershy didn't eat anything, silly billies! So I'm saving you guys some lunch for later!" She dumped half a tray of cookies into her mane, and then poured the rest of them into her mouth. "Ymm!"

The private chamber was still very large, but unlike the wide open court hallways and audience chambers, it had a door. Celestia closed it with her magic as they all entered. "How come the private room, your Highness?" Applejack asked. "Is there something hush-hush about all this?"

"To a degree, yes," Celestia said. "There are many here in the court who would... not approve of a mission to rescue Discord, and I prefer not to give the gossip mills of Canterlot new fodder to squawk over." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. Twilight noted that Celestia looked... tired. It bothered her. Princess Celestia never looked tired during the day.

"So we are going on some kind of rescue mission?" Spike asked. "_All_ of us?"

"You, most certainly, Spike. No matter who goes on this mission, there will be no way to communicate home by conventional means. If you need help or encounter difficulties, only a dragon's messenger fire can send a letter between the realms."

"Wow! So I'm important to the mission?"

"Absolutely." Celestia smiled warmly at him.

"Who all you thinking of sending, your Highness?" Applejack asked.

"I do not believe Princess Cadance and Shining Armor will be able to leave their duties in the Crystal Empire for this," Celestia said. "And if it's true that he's being held in the basement of Fluttershy's counterpart, and that the portal is near the Everfree... a small group who can move quickly, who are familiar with Ponyville and who the residents will not be alarmed to see, but who have sufficient power and experience to handle themselves should there be trouble, would be ideal. We cannot afford to send anyone whose counterpart might be dead, for that would certainly raise great alarm and consternation if they were spotted, but the only ponies we know to be alive are Spike, the six Element Bearers, and myself. I... cannot go." She sighed. "The other Celestia would surely sense my presence. There cannot be two Sun Bearers who are unaware of each other. So I believe that ideally, the party should consist of you seven only."

"Prin—uh, Celestia," Twilight said, unable to quite get used to the fact that her rank made it proper to address Celestia by her first name, "wouldn't the fact that we don't know that Shiny and Cadance are alive over there mean we shouldn't bring them anyway?"

"They could have brought enough power and skill to the group that it would be worth the risk," Celestia said. "I have many powerful and well-trained soldiers among my Royal Guard, and my sister's Lunar Guard has many as well. But none have experience in fighting by _your_ sides. Shining Armor and Cadance do. Nonetheless... they're not available, and I have every confidence in the six of you ponies in any case."

"And me," Spike said.

"Spike, your role on this mission is too vital to be jeopardized by potential combat," Celestia said. "You shall accompany the Bearers, but I want you to avoid any type of confrontation with the ponies on the other side unless it is absolutely necessary. If you should be injured, the others would be left with no means of summoning aid from our side if they needed to."

Twilight grinned to herself. _Nicely played, Princess._ She'd just told Spike to keep out of trouble and stay safe, and had managed to phrase it in a way that made it sound like it was his duty and a heroic act to do so, not something he should do because he was a tiny little dragon who couldn't realistically fight a full grown pony. Telling Spike to stay safe because he was a kid never worked anymore, but telling him it was the best possible way for him to protect the rest of the group just might.

"Yes, your Highness!" Spike said, standing up straight and proud. "I'm your dragon!"

"You know I'm ready for an adventure any time, any day," Rainbow Dash said. "But, Princess, I have to ask... is this really what we oughta be doing? I mean, I don't think Discord deserves to be tortured either, but... we haven't got our Elements, and the evil versions of us do. And they're _evil_. So except for me, most of them are gonna be better fighters than my friends are, I mean you can't get awesomer than me by being evil and if she's got her opposite trait in her then she's probably a coward who'll run away, but the others... a mean and angry Pinkie or Fluttershy's probably gonna be better able to hurt other ponies than our nice and kind Pinkie and Fluttershy. And the other Twilight came up with a spell to _take down Discord._ No offense, Twi, but you never came up with anything like that."

"It's true, I didn't," Twilight said. "It sounds like the alternate Discord was running riot on that world for a lot longer before they could put him in stone than ours did, so she probably had a lot more time where she felt she had to come up with things." But she was definitely going to look into this Sweet Dreams spell for herself, when she had time. According to Discord, the other Twilight had initially disabled him with a spell that fed on chaos and produced happy illusions that kept the subject calm, and even if Discord himself never did anything that warranted having to stop him, he had never been the only source of dangerous chaotic behavior in Equestria. The obedience spell was completely evil and Twilight would never have used such a spell on Discord even if she knew how, but the Sweet Dreams spell didn't sound harmful at all.

"Rainbow, are you saying we should _leave_ him there?" Fluttershy asked, anguish in her voice.

"Well, um... maybe? If he's there, we don't need to worry about what he's up to here... and it's not like he'd do the same for us. I'm not worried about myself, like I said, I'm pretty sure I can kick my counterpart's flank into next Tuesday. But I'm worried about the rest of you guys. They're more ruthless than you and they've got their Elements and we don't. And... he kinda _did_ get himself into this..."

"How could you..." Fluttershy whispered, looking utterly stricken.

"That's exactly what he thought we'd say," Twilight said.

"Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash is only doing as is her nature. Don't be angry with her," Celestia said. "It is the nature of loyalty to put the well being of friends first, before any other consideration. And given that loyalty is so powerful once it is given, she does not easily trust or befriend anypony who's harmed her friends at any point. It is perfectly understandable for her to put your safety and well being ahead of Discord's, just as it is yours to forgive easily and to consider the suffering of a friend to be your highest possible priority."

"I'm not saying we _should_ leave him there," Rainbow said, uncomfortably, looking away from Fluttershy's eyes. "But maybe we should think about what the best thing to do for all of Equestria is? I mean, I'd _like_ to go kick evil me's flank, but is that what we ought to be doing?"

"You're absolutely correct, Rainbow Dash," Celestia said calmly. "We should think about what the best thing to do for all Equestria is. That is always my first consideration, when making any decision. And I assure you, rescuing Discord _is_ the best thing to do for all Equestria." She put a hoof on Rainbow Dash's shoulder. "I'm glad you brought up this question, because I'm sure it must have been in the minds of some of your friends as well, and I welcome the opportunity to explain why we _must_ rescue him."

"Okay...?" Rainbow was now looking _extremely_ uncomfortable, as if she couldn't tell if Princess Celestia was angry at her or not.

Celestia lowered her hoof, and stepped away. "Setting aside the moral considerations of what the _good_ thing to do is, the righteous thing to do. From a purely practical perspective... in Discord's letter, which I take it you have not read, Rainbow?"

"Uh, no, Applejack and Twilight and Spike all agreed that nopony besides the three of them and you oughta read it."

"Of course, and that was wise. But if you _had_ read the letter, you would have realized exactly what I am sure they have, and what I have. Discord says that he believes they are trying to brainwash him into being an obedient, unquestioning servant... with the full power of Chaos at his command. He says that he doesn't know what they intend for him, but speculates that perhaps they will want him to conquer other worlds for them. Other dimensions. If that is the case, and we cannot assume that it is _not_... ours is the first he knows of. And if we leave him there, whatever loyalty he feels toward us now will be turned when they break him. He will hate us for abandoning him there. He might even _seek_ permission from his masters to attack us."

"Um. Yeah. I guess... we don't want that!" Rainbow laughed nervously in obvious embarrassment and continued discomfort.

"But if that were the only consideration... if I were as ruthless and cruel as it seems my counterpart may be, and I was only concerned with ensuring that Discord could not be turned against us... I might send a team of assassins to kill him. Without his power, he's as mortal as any pony. In his current circumstance he might even thank me for that. There is a reason why I wouldn't choose that path, aside from the fact that it's a betrayal of everything I believe in and everything Equestria stands for. The truth is, Equestria owes Discord a debt it has never been able to repay."

"Owes _Discord_ a debt?" Twilight said, somewhat shocked.

"My goodness, he's only been reformed a few months, and I certainly hadn't heard of anything particularly remarkable he's done for Equestria," Rarity said. "Whatever could you mean, Princess?"

Celestia sighed deeply. "Discord... was not always Equestria's enemy."

"Oh! Oh!" Pinkie raised a hoof. "Is this like all those stories where he used to be your brother and he was an alicorn and then some kind of mean nasty Chaos thing took over his brain and turned him into a bad guy?"

"That's ridiculous, Pinkie, Discord can't be..." Twilight trailed off at the expression on Celestia's face.

"Discord was never an alicorn. He was always a draconequus... a species that is now extinct, except for him," Celestia said. "And from the time I met him, he wielded Chaos magic. However... I am curious as to the source of these 'stories,' Pinkie, because some of those suppositions are almost accurate."

"Oh, they're not here," Pinkie said. "They're out there." She waved her hoof at nothing. "Just like the one we're in!"

"Princess, that's just Pinkie being Pinkie," Applejack said. "But I admit I'm mighty interested in what parts of that crazy story she just told might be the truth."

"My family took Discord in, as a foster brother of sorts to myself and Luna," Celestia said. "He was... different then. Not physically, he looked much as he does today, though younger. And in some ways he was much the same. He still loved Chaos. He enjoyed playing pranks, teasing Luna and myself – especially Luna – and starting arguments. And he was thoughtless, and occasionally cruel, but back then he also had great compassion at times. He never _did_ have very much empathy for any ponies he didn't know well. But for the few he invited into his heart, he was as loyal and true as any of you are to each other."

"He told Fluttershy he never had a friend before," Applejack said, scowling slightly.

"He never did. He had foster family and a teacher. I told him on occasion to make friends with other ponies besides Luna and myself, and he..." She broke off for a moment. "Excuse me, my throat is a bit dry. I think I'll have some of that excellent apple juice from your farm, Applejack." She opened the door, stepped out a moment, and returned, sipping a cup of apple juice.

Twilight might have just imagined hearing her voice break, right before she excused herself to get a drink.

"What did he do, Princess?" Fluttershy said softly. "I mean... if you're okay with talking about it..."

"Of course I am," Celestia said warmly. "I was going to say... he told me that Luna and I were all that he needed, that he had no desire to make friends of other ponies when he had us." She sighed. "Probably I should have demanded it, or made arrangements for him to meet others whether he liked it or not, but... perhaps it would have made no difference in the end."

"What happened, Princess?" Rarity asked. "He's obviously quite different now..."

"What happened was war." Celestia took another sip of her apple juice. "In those days the dragons were different as well. Today they are disorganized, individualistic to the point of being almost ungoverned, but in those days, they were a great empire, and they were at war with Equestria. And we were losing. When I ascended to the throne, Luna was not at her majority yet, so she didn't yet rule by my side. I was barely more than a filly, and I had the responsibility of protecting my nation against an enemy more powerful, who were far too proud to surrender to mere ponies, who were very difficult to kill with magic or in fact anything, and who didn't seek to merely _conquer_ us but _eat_ us."

"Yikes," Spike said. "Dragons... dragons don't eat ponies nowadays though, right?"

"Not as a rule," Celestia said. "But as I said, things were different in those days." She closed her eyes. "I sent my most powerful weapon to the Dragon Empire to defeat them. Discord wasn't as close to all-powerful as he is now, then, but he was the most powerful mage in Equestria and most likely the world. I knew that using his power in the context of warfare, using chaos to kill and to destroy the minds of his foes, could damage his sanity. He knew it as well. I sent him anyway, and he went willingly, for I had to consider all of Equestria, not just one I... one I cared for. And he had little loyalty to the abstract ideal of Equestria, but he was loyal to _me_, and to Luna." She breathed deeply. "If I had known then what I know now... I might still have done it, and he would almost certainly have disobeyed me and done it anyway if I had ordered him _not_ to go. For all the damage Discord's chaos did to Equestria, he never killed ponies except by thoughtless accident, not that I was aware of in any case. The dragons would have eaten us all."

"Are you saying Discord went insane because he was forced to use his powers to kill the dragons?" Twilight asked.

"Not... entirely. There was no one moment that broke him. It was a slow slide. His sanity was questionable for some time, but I was always able to return him to himself, to break his obsessive focus on Chaos and make him recognize there was value in life aside from making everything change constantly. But eventually... the dragons tried to kill him, in a way that completed his transformation into the avatar of Chaos, not a mere Chaos mage. He became very nearly unstoppable... and lost his reason, at the same time. And for some time, we were separated because of what the dragons had done. He believed Luna and me to be dead, and with what was left of his sanity gone, he blamed us for abandoning him. And blamed us the worse when he learned we weren't dead, even though it was no choice of ours that separated us from him. I couldn't... I couldn't bring him back to reason. Chaos was all he loved any longer, all he lived for, all that mattered to him."

She took another sip of her apple juice. "So you see... Discord saved Equestria, at the cost of his sanity, and we repaid him by fighting him for centuries and then sealing him in stone for a millennium. We had no choice, but in a sense, neither did he. He lost his ability to freely make choices, to restrain himself, because of the war I sent him to win. Ponies live and thrive today because Discord willingly risked his psyche to save us. And I never meant to lock him away for a thousand years... only until I could find some other way to restrain him, to bring him back to himself. But then I... then I lost Luna, and... with the Elements broken, I had no way to seal Discord again if I freed him. I didn't dare."

"How tragic," Rarity said softly. "I never knew... It must have been so hard for you, Princess."

"I always intended to release him, once you six were bearing the Elements. But not right away. You needed experience, you needed to deepen your friendships, for I knew that destroying friendship had become one of his favorite tactics. He broke loose before I thought you were ready, and you did well, defeating and resealing him... but it had always been my intention to ask you to try to befriend and reform him, eventually. Because I knew it was possible. Because once he had been my... my..."

"Yer brother?" Applejack asked.

Celestia shook her head, her eyes welling with tears. Twilight hadn't seen the Princess so overwhelmed with emotion since the Elements had defeated Nightmare Moon and restored Princess Luna. "Luna saw him as a brother," she said. "But I was the one who asked my father to take him in, when we first we met. We were too old to be newly a brother and sister." She closed her eyes. "It was very long ago."

"Oh, my," Rarity said. "Princess... did you... _love_ him?"

Celestia nodded, once. "As I said. A long time ago. It... doesn't matter any longer. There have been too many years of enmity... I am not sure we can ever even be friends, now. But... yes. He was my first love, and I his."

Twilight blinked. Discord had told her, while he'd been ranting about the nightmare she'd had with him in it and why he was much too attractive to stoop to raping ponies, that the "most beautiful and powerful mare in the world" had... well, the way he'd phrased it, it had sounded positively sordid. He'd said she'd thrown herself at him and begged him to take her virginity. Twilight had shouted "TMI!" at him and strongly considered hitting him, again, and she hadn't taken the boast at all seriously. But Discord had a way of telling the truth in a way that made it sound like lies. And mixing lies and half-truths into it; he'd also told her he'd never had any relationships or much more than one-night stands, had actually bragged about it as if it was something to be proud of, and if what Princess Celestia was saying now was true, he'd been lying about that. But actually telling the truth about being the first love of a beautiful, powerful mare... while not bothering to mention that she'd been his first, and if the rest of what he'd said had any accuracy at all, only love, as well.

"Wow," Rainbow Dash said. "Just... wow. I, uh, I'd have _never_ expected that, Princess."

Celestia smiled wanly. "No one ever does," she said. "It isn't... a fact either of us advertise. For obvious reasons. And as I said, it's no longer relevant... except as part of the explanation why I felt he could be reformed, and as part of the explanation why I feel Equestria _owes_ him that chance. He has done so many terrible things... things I can never truly forgive. But even at the height of his madness, he protected Equestria from threats that _weren't_ him. And I know that he can control himself for love's sake, that he _has_. I am not sure anypony can offer him love, not anymore, but I believed he could control himself for friendship's sake as well. And thus far he has. Mostly. As much as he ever did, anyway." She sighed. "For the sake of the debt all ponies owe him, for losing himself to save us from dragonkind, we must rescue him. For the sake of _not_ allowing him to become a weapon against us again, we must rescue him. And... for the sake of what I once felt for him... I, myself, cannot bear to leave him to such torment. Will you help him for Equestria's sake, Rainbow? And for mine?"

Rainbow nodded seriously. "You can count on me, Princess."

"And me," Rarity said. "I hadn't any idea you and Discord had such a tragically romantic past, your Highness. Of course I'll do _anything_ in my power to help."

"Figured I wasn't gonna be able to leave somepony in a place like that soon as I figured out he was telling the truth," Applejack said. "So I'm all in."

"So what're we waiting for? Let's go!" Pinkie shouted.

"Pinkie, we don't even know where we're going," Twilight said.

"Oh." Pinkie's face fell.

"Have you attempted to find the portal yet, Twilight?" Celestia asked.

"Not yet, but something as disruptive as a portal to an alternate dimension should show up pretty easily if I scry for it." She mused for a moment. "I'm thinking, we should return to Ponyville. The portal's near there anyway, so it's almost on the way. We can pick up any supplies we might need..."

"Yeah, that's right!" Pinkie said. "If we're in a different Ponyville then all the emergency supplies I put all over the place in case of emergency would be in different places because a different me would have put them there and maybe they would be evil supplies! I wouldn't want to grab a balloon that I set aside for a balloon emergency and find out it was a bomb she put aside for a bomb emergency! So I'm going to have to pack up all my emergency supplies and bring them with us!"

"And I'll want my medical supplies," Fluttershy said softly. "And maybe I should speak with Zecora about bringing along a few healing potions."

"Oh, and I will most definitely want to bring along costuming supplies," Rarity said. "After all, if we happen to run into our other selves, _they_ won't believe we belong there; we may have to disguise ourselves!"

"I figure I'll just bring a lot of rope," Applejack said. "Can't think what else I might have that we'd need for a trip like this."

"Mountain climbing pitons," Rainbow Dash said. "And one of those hook thingies that you swing up onto the top of things so you can climb. That's what Daring Do would bring!"

"Darling, why does Daring Do need mountain climbing pitons when she is a pegasus?" Rarity asked.

"Duh! Because when she was fighting the werejaguars, their high priestess cast a spell on the mountain to make the air burn if you got more than pony height off the ground, so she ended up having to climb Mount Popocatepillar to throw the Ruby of Doom into the volcano with mountain climbing pitons instead of flying!"

"So you're gonna bring some?" Applejack asked skeptically.

"Naah, there aren't any mountains in Ponyville," Rainbow said confidently. "I figure I don't need to bring anything but my awesome self."

"I'll need paper and quills," Spike said. "Lots and lots, maybe."

"And we need to pack food!" Pinkie said. "Oh, I know, I'll bring a couple of cans of Cotton Candy in a Can! That way when we find Discord we can open up the can and give him the cotton candy! And if he has his powers back he could eat the can too!"

"When we get back, I'll make a list," Twilight said. "We'll pack everything, and we'll make sure that everything we need to do gets covered while we're gone. Like someone to take care of Fluttershy's animals."

"Yeah, and I'll need to get someone to cover my weather shifts," Rainbow said.

"I'm going to take a few minutes to see if I can scry the portal from here," Twilight said. "It'd be better if I could tell Princess Celestia exactly where it is _before_ we leave. Spike, while I'm concentrating on this, can you take notes on what everypony says they need to pack?"

* * *

While Twilight was setting up her scrying spell, and the others were talking animatedly with Spike about the preparations they needed to make, Fluttershy turned to Princess Celestia. "Princess, can... can I talk to you? Um... privately?"

"Of course, Fluttershy. Walk with me." Celestia walked with Fluttershy out of the chamber. "What did you wish to talk about?"

"Um..." This was so hard. "What you said... before... about you and Discord?"

"Yes?"

"Does that... does that mean... is it okay to feel that way about someone who isn't a pony?"

"Did someone tell you it was not?"

"I'm not sure... exactly. It's just... everypony always seems to act like... it's, um, unnatural. Wrong, or, or something. Ponies joke about Spike's crush on Rarity, but if she had the same feelings for him, some ponies would act like she's weird? Or sick?"

Celestia nodded. "Prejudice against xenophilia. It comes and goes. There are times that it is stronger in society, and times it is less strong. Discord and I had to hide our true feelings in public, at first; I didn't wish to cause a scandal, and while Discord _did_, he cared for me enough to respect my feelings. Eventually I stopped caring. The common ponies might have been scandalized if they knew, but we were at war... and when my love came home to me ranting about the world being a soap bubble and talking about turning the patterns of everything inside out and telling me that reality was melting, I wasn't going to turn him aside for propriety's sake, no matter who could see us."

Turning the patterns of everything inside out. The last time Fluttershy had seen Discord, he'd talked about how strongly he was compelled to do that, how it obsessed him and it _hurt_ him to be unable to do it. The Princess had said that in the old days, he'd been able to hold himself back for the sake of love, and that now she believed he could hold back for the sake of friendship, and Fluttershy knew that that was true. She'd seen him doing it. She knew how hard it had been for him.

She felt so guilty. She was the one who'd told him that ponies would be afraid of even harmless, beautiful chaos, that he needed to make friends before he could do even that much. And so he'd run off to create chaos somewhere that she wouldn't see him do it, because he couldn't bring himself to do without it. And now he was in a terrible place, trapped, because she had told him to hold himself back still, and he couldn't do it.

Fluttershy wanted to save him, wanted to fly in there and Stare down anypony who'd hurt him, wanted to bring him safely home and take care of him and make him well again. But in addition to that, she wanted him to know she'd never meant to make him feel hopeless, she'd never meant to make him feel like he had to run to another _universe_ to get what he needed. If bringing his light rain to Ponyville could have saved him from needing to do this, she should have encouraged him to do it, she should have talked Twilight and Pinkie and Rarity into accepting it and let them convince everypony else, because Twilight would have been fascinated by it and Pinkie would have thought it was fun and Rarity would have seen the beauty in rain that was light. They wouldn't have been afraid of something beautiful and harmless even if it was strange, not if _she'd_ assured them ahead of time. But she hadn't. She'd been afraid of what they would think. She hadn't been confident enough to stand up for her own opinion to her friends, and because of that, one of her friends was suffering horribly.

She wanted him to know how sorry she was for doing that.

She wanted him to know... if he could use love as an anchor to help him deal with his obsessions... if he could want that as much as he wanted Chaos... maybe if he could possibly be interested... maybe...

Before she could lose her nerve, she asked, "So, it wouldn't, you don't think it would be wrong or weird if, um, if I was in love with..." She trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.

Celestia's eyes widened. "Oh. Oh, my poor little pony. Oh, my poor dear. I'm so sorry."

She laid a wing over Fluttershy's. "It's not wrong. Love is never wrong. But oh, my poor Fluttershy, if this had been any other time..."

"Any other time?" Fluttershy whispered.

"You love Discord," Celestia said softly. "That's what you're trying to tell me, right? And you're afraid that this makes you 'wrong or weird'. It's not wrong. Love is never wrong. But, Fluttershy..." She took a deep breath. "You didn't read the letter, right?"

Fluttershy nodded, wide eyes fixed on the princess, who seemed distraught on her behalf.

"What did Twilight tell you was happening to Discord?"

"The evil versions of us were, um... torturing him..." She could barely say the words. She could barely bring herself to wrap her mind around the concept. Discord was so strong and confident and carefree most of the time, so funny and _alive_. She'd seen him suffer emotionally. She knew he could feel physical pain; he'd told her it was painful to be turned to stone. But the thought of him being _tortured_... it seemed impossible, it seemed like a violation of everything he was, but then, if the impossible could happen to anypony it would be Discord.

"Did she give you any detail?"

"Just that... it was really bad."

Celestia nodded once. "I understand why she would have wanted to keep the details from you. But I think you need to know some things. I think perhaps your friends underestimate your strength. For the sake of helping Discord, can you bear to be told details that will horrify you?"

Fluttershy swallowed, but nodded. "I... um, I can take it. If it's to help him."

"First... I am so sorry to tell you, Fluttershy, but your counterpart is his chief torturer."

Fluttershy sucked in her breath. Let it out slowly. "Of course... because if the other him made her into her opposite, she'd be Cruelty... so that makes sense."

"He gave her a different name, so he wouldn't confuse her with you. He's trying, very hard, to separate the two of you in his mind. He didn't do that for any of the others. But... you must understand... part of the way they are torturing him is that by having her do it, they are using his feelings for you to harm him."

"But I thought... do they know about me? I thought they thought he was the Discord from their universe..."

"Discord thinks they do. It may be accidental. Perhaps they gave her the task simply because, as you say, she is Cruelty. But whether it's their intent or not... they are using his feelings for you to cause him harm, and... I don't know if he's strong enough to bear that. I fear he may simply let the part of himself that cares for others shut down."

"No." Fluttershy shook her head. "I can't let that happen. I can't."

"I hope you can help him fight it. He was... still resisting, when he wrote the letter. We have no way to know how long it was between the time that he finished it and the time that Spike received it, but we know that, at least when he finished the letter, he was still able to care." Celestia lowered her head. "But even if he is still able to care, even if he still wants your friendship... more than that is probably... unlikely."

"I... understand," Fluttershy whispered. "If... he loved you... there's no way I'm as pretty as you, and—"

"No." Celestia's voice was firm. "No, Fluttershy, that is _not_ any kind of reason whatsoever. I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that if this had not happened, and you had told _him_ how you feel, he would have returned your feelings. Perhaps not immediately – it's been centuries since he let himself dare love anypony – but eventually. You are Kindness itself, and he longed for your friendship so badly, he turned away from the cruelty of his chaos for the first time in as many centuries as it has been since he last loved. But." She looked down again. "I was not done, telling you the things I fear you need to know from the letter," she said softly. "Fluttershy..." She looked up again, meeting Fluttershy's eyes, and her own seemed to be full of all the sorrow and compassion in the universe. "Your counterpart... raped him. More than once."

The horror of the words hit Fluttershy like a blow to the back of her neck, and she staggered slightly, wishing for a moment that she was a drama queen like Rarity and she could fall back onto a fainting couch. Rape was a rare crime in Equestria, but considered one of the most horrifying possible; it took the act of loving intimacy itself and turned it into a torture. While there was no death penalty for any crime in Equestrian law, it was common that the Royal Guard would have to be sent to protect convicted rapists on their way to prison, in small towns like Ponyville, because otherwise the citizens would lynch them, and the local constabulary would turn a blind eye. The thought of anypony doing such a horrible thing to Discord, who'd only ever had one friend and one love in his millennia of existence, horrified her. The thought that it was another version of _herself_ sickened her utterly.

But, she realized, didn't entirely surprise her. She remembered being her cruel self, little as she wanted to. The others all thought Discord had put something on her that wasn't originally there, but that hadn't been it. Fluttershy _knew_ there was a darkness inside her; she'd spent her life forcing down selfish impulses, cruel impulses, violent impulses. When she'd gone half-insane at the Gala demanding that the animals should love her, when she'd taken Iron Will's assertiveness training and turned into a selfish monster... that hadn't been any doing of Discord's. That was inside her. She'd resisted Discord in the labyrinth, not because she was so innocent that she simply had no darkness inside, but because she'd faced that darkness and forced it down so many times, he couldn't trick her into giving into it.

She was much too shy to ever ask, or offer... but she was a mare like any other. She had desires. She knew that. And her cruel self had been so much like herself at the Gala, herself under Iron Will's advice. If she'd been corrupted by cruelty, if she not only no longer cared if she hurt other ponies to get what she wanted but in fact actively _liked_ doing so... she'd spent her life being much too shy to approach any stallion she had a crush on, or let them approach her, and much too fearful that she would be despised if she admitted her interests in males who weren't ponies. But her cruel self wouldn't care about being despised, and her cruel self wasn't shy. Her cruel self took what she wanted, regardless of what other ponies thought about it.

Her own feelings for Discord were complicated, and hampered by her usual anxieties, but she knew she'd come to find him attractive, even as she'd felt shame for it because he was so unlike a pony. If the cruel version of her felt the same way... and Discord was under an obedience spell, forced to comply...

Now she felt even more sickened. She didn't want to know in her heart how it was that her alter ego could commit such a horrible crime against her friend. She didn't want to understand it, she didn't want to feel as if there but for the grace of fate, she could have gone. But she couldn't help it. She knew herself, she knew her own dark side better than most, and she knew _exactly_ where the desire and the will to commit such horrible acts was coming from. She would never, ever want to hurt anypony, _especially_ not someone she felt she might love, in such a way... but under Discord's influence after he'd attacked her in the maze, when her dark side had ruled her, she'd turned into a pony who _loved_ hurting others. Take away her desire to never cause suffering, turn it into a desire _to_ cause suffering, and love and desire could easily be perverted into such cruelty.

"I see," she whispered, feeling filthy. Feeling like she would never dare touch him, because the part of her that was like the one who'd hurt him lived inside her, and _he_ knew it, he'd brought that part of her to the surface that time, so how could he not see her as being like the one who'd done such terrible things to him?

"I am so sorry, Fluttershy," Celestia said. "If this had been any other time... I would have encouraged you. I know he would have been so much happier with the love of a pony like you, and while I know from experience how hard he makes life for those who love him, I remember that before everything was taken from us, I thought it was well worth it. But... his reactions are not always what one would expect, he prides himself on being unpredictable in many situations, but... I would think it unlikely that he would be ready for that sort of love any time soon, even once he's recovered from this."

_And probably never from me_, Fluttershy thought with numb resignation. Well. So be it. She'd never really thought she could win his love anyway; she'd only started to imagine it as a possibility when the Princess had revealed that Discord _had_ once loved a pony, that he was capable of it. It didn't matter. What mattered was that she would help save him, and remind him that friendship wasn't something that caused suffering. Make him remember why he wanted to have a friend, if they were trying to break him of that.

"I understand, Princess Celestia," she murmured. "I won't, I, I don't want to do anything to make him upset or, remind him of what happened. I won't... say anything..."

"I hope it can be different someday," Celestia said gently. "Perhaps, with time, it can be. But for now, I think... it's wise of you to agree not to bring this up with him."

Fluttershy nodded.

* * *

"Got it," Twilight said. "I think I've got a good fix on where that portal is... and I think I know how to open it, too." She grinned. "It's not like the one to the world Sunset Shimmer went to. It feels... I don't know how to describe it. Closer. Less complicated. Like the mirror portal was a big portcullised castle gateway at the end of a drawbridge with a moat around it, and this is just a sliding door."

"It is one of Discord's talents to make the impossible, or highly implausible, easy," Princess Celestia said, walking back into the room with Fluttershy behind her. Twilight was a bit surprised to see her come through the door, since she hadn't noticed her leave, but she had been concentrating pretty intently. "When Luna and I sealed him the first time, he had left dozens of these things around, and unlike most of his chaos, they didn't vanish when his power was locked. Luna spent several years hunting for them to seal them while I was trying to re-establish order and governance, because unicorns kept accidentally activating them and falling through."

"I think he might have fixed that," Twilight said. "This one has an image lock."

"An image lock?" Rainbow asked. "What's that?"

"Well, it's like a lock you put on a door, where the key is to visualize an image," Twilight said. "For a while it was driving me nuts, because the idea of trying to figure out what kind of image _Discord_ might have come up with... I mean it could be anything. But then I realized, he told me about the portal in the letter and he didn't mention the image lock, so it must be something he thought would be so easy I'd get it right away. So I tried visualizing Fluttershy, and that worked."

Fluttershy turned red. "Oh..."

"I suppose somepony could have accidentally fallen through it if they were practicing certain types of magic, or teleportation, right near there, and they saw Fluttershy while they were doing it. But it's not _that_ close to her house, so that's not too likely." She turned to Spike. "Can I see what we've got for our checklist?"

Spike showed her the list, and she ran down it. "Fluttershy, anything to add?"

"Um, you've already got the medical kit and the potions, so, uh, I don't think so."

"Had a thought," Applejack said. "Twilight, when we get a tree that's dying, or rotted, or it's just plain making bad apples, we can take a cutting from it, plant it somewhere else, and get that to grow up healthy."

"Um... ok?" Twilight wasn't sure what this had to do with anything.

"Well, the Elements of Harmony are like the fruits of the _Tree_ of Harmony. It's a magic crystal tree, but still, it's a tree. So, I'm wondering, if the Elements are corrupted over there, maybe the Tree is too, or maybe it's too weak to fix the Elements. What if we took a cutting from our Tree of Harmony, brought it over there, and planted it?"

"What would that do?"

"Oh!" Rarity said. "Of course! One cannot keep Harmony in a vacuum; if the entire tune has changed keys, the tune is still in harmony. But if we bring a cutting from _our_ tree, perhaps it might act as a tuning fork and disrupt what the other Discord did to the other Elements, bringing them back in key with our Tree."

"Or at the very least, mess up the Elements so they can't harmonize with each other," Applejack said. "Ain't so sure I like the idea that we'd just bring the other Elements back in key. Doesn't seem like it's much in the way of justice to just turn them back into the _us_ ponies they oughta be, after all they've done."

"Oh no." Fluttershy had a look on her face Twilight had only seen a few times... usually preparatory to either the Stare, or Fluttershy doing something absolutely crazy. "No, Applejack, that would be the _perfect_ justice. If we could restore them to their true selves with a cutting from the Tree to reharmonize their elements and drive out the opposite parts... they'd become just like us. But with the memories of everything they've done. _That_ would be justice."

What if Twilight woke up one moment and realized she had been a torturer? That she'd employed an _obedience_ spell? Twilight shuddered. Fluttershy was right. That was justice. Or possibly the cruelest possible thing they could do to their dark selves. Or both. "Well, there's no guarantee it'll work, but it's worth a shot. I think we've got a good list of supplies and plans here." She looked over the list. "We might not be able to get all this stuff together in time to cross through in daylight, and maybe we don't want to be doing it in daylight anyway. How's this for a plan? We collect everything we need, we make arrangements for coverage, we get some sleep, and we get up really really early, like 4 am, and cross over then."

"Wouldn't it be better to do it tonight?" Fluttershy asked.

Twilight shook her head. "We need to be sharp if we're possibly going up against ponies who are _us_, with all our same talents, but probably a lot more experience at fighting and a lot more ruthlessness. I don't want to leave him over there any longer than we have to either, but we'll all be in a lot better shape for a rescue mission if we're not tired."

"Well, I don't see how waking up at 4 am could possibly leave us _not_ tired," Rarity said, "but you do have a point. Better to get some sleep than none."

"I'll have Spike make us all a pot of his special 'wake up' blend of tea before we head out."

"And I'll make energy croissants for breakfast!"

Twilight blinked. "Energy croissants?"

"Right! You mix in high protein food like cheese, but low fat so you don't slow down from trying to process it, and that balances with the sugar, which gives you energy, so that gives you more energy! Add some spiciness with ginger and cinnamon to give you a wake up kick, and use just a little bit of sour! I do cherry cheese and raspberry cheese, with a lot of icing. When I need to pull an all-nighter I make myself a batch of them and eat them all night!"

"Huh." Pinkie actually had a potion maker's sensibility about her baking, choosing ingredients for their effect and not necessarily just the taste. Who knew? "Okay, sounds good."

"I've requested that my chariot drivers take you back to Ponyville for speed considerations," Celestia said. "Please send me status reports whenever the situation changes, and you're able to. Good luck, my little ponies." She smiled at Spike. "And my little dragon."

"We won't let you down, Princess," Twilight said.

"Hey, I can go faster on my own, so I'm gonna head back and meet you guys tomorrow in the AM," Rainbow Dash said. "I gotta go talk to the weather team in Cloudsdale anyway, and get somepony to watch Tank for me."

"All right. Please don't be late, Rainbow."

Rainbow Dash grinned. "Could say the same thing about you slowpokes. See you!"

Twilight looked around at the other four ponies, and Spike. "Let's go."


	3. Breaking Chaos

**Opposition, 3 PM**

Twilight Sparkle, Element of Magic and Order, approached Canterlot Palace for her thrice-weekly afternoon appointment with Princess Celestia. There was much to do today. Treaties with the buffalo needed to be signed and implemented since Twilight had demonstrated to the buffalo why it was inadvisable to challenge the Elements. The Elements of Opposition could be excellent friends and allies to those who approached them with Harmony. To those who wanted to enforce their own selfish desires, those that approached them with Disharmony, the Elements could be powerful and ruthless foes. The buffalo had seen the light of reason and agreed to yield their claim on the land they declared to be their ancient territory.

Sometimes Twilight considered returning to Canterlot to advise the princess full-time. Her friends in Ponyville would miss her, but Princess Celestia _needed_ her, and missing a friend was an emotional weakness that was acceptable in peaceful times, but now, while Equestria was still rebuilding from the year of chaos, it was perhaps no longer appropriate to allow such emotional concerns to dictate her behavior. On the other hand, it was her presence in Ponyville that allowed her to maintain control over Equestria's most powerful weapon. Only the bonds of friendship between her and the other Bearers allowed them to _use_ the Elements. Without her presence enforcing those ties, Fluttershy would retreat into her hermitage, viciously lashing out at any who dared disturb her; Rarity would allow her greed and ambition to get the better of her, and focus her sole attention on social climbing, self-promotion, and building her wealth; Rainbow Dash would probably leave them all behind permanently to pursue her career with the Wonderbolts, or her work as a motivational speaker, or whatever other plans had captured her fickle attention this week; and Pinkie Pie would probably kill innocent ponies. Only Applejack could be trusted to try to preserve friendships between the Bearers, and Applejack's manipulative ways sometimes backfired, now that her friends knew not to trust her completely.

Besides, right now she had her research on Discord to pursue. The Bearers had mutually agreed to carry the burden of training him to obedience themselves – except for Rainbow Dash, who enjoyed ordering him to punch himself in the face on occasion but had little patience and couldn't be bothered to help her friends with anything most days, and Pinkie Pie, who was far, far too enthusiastic about the notion of demonstrating to Discord the new perspective on humor that he had granted her. (Or, to be precise, his dead cognate had granted her. Twilight's research had confirmed, eventually, that the quantum signature of the Discord she held in custody was different than the one Spike had misguidedly killed.) In order to ensure that Discord's obedience training held firm under the control of _any_ of the Bearers, it was necessary for the majority of them to participate. Thus, he was held prisoner in Ponyville, and thus, Twilight needed to be there to conduct her research.

She was quite enthused about it, and looking forward to telling Celestia her new discoveries, once they had settled the matters of state on today's agenda. The Diadem of Order had been far more active than the Element of Magic had ever been, whispering insights and new directions for research to Twilight, and with its guidance, Twilight was beginning to understand how it might be possible to shape reality.

Magic was chaos, at its fundament. Discord's power was so much greater than anypony's in part because he manipulated the raw force of magic, not channeled through the rules and structures that kept magic harmonized with the world. This allowed him to manipulate reality at a more fundamental level than magic was ordinarily capable of, because he did not need to maintain harmony with the existing structures of reality. But his manipulations could rarely be organized or permanent because by its nature chaos rejected organization and permanence.

Twilight's experiments had long ago revealed that chaotic and harmonic magic could be converted into each other, an obvious corollary to the proposition that all magic was fundamentally chaos. Under most circumstances, that conversion resulted in a great deal of waste energy, as the magic would drastically weaken once the strictures of harmony were placed on it. By extensive experimentation on Discord, however, Twilight was beginning to see how it would be possible to use the raw force of Chaos to permanently alter the shape of reality by imposing, not Harmony, but Order. Harmony maintained balance and kept everything in the same organizational structure, even if that structure was inefficient and non-optimal. Order had the power to _reorganize_, to reshape the very rules that reality was structured by, permanently; but at some point in the far distant past, Discord had destroyed the Order Avatar, scattering its power, so there was no longer one source of Orderly power great enough to change reality. Chaos sought impermanent change and Harmony sought to keep things going the way they had always gone; neither Discord nor the Elements had ever had any interest in permanent change.

The equation was altered now. With the Diadem of Order, Twilight Sparkle was now capable of seeing that the Harmony she had lived her prior life by was flawed. The preservation of an inefficient system that brought undue pain and strife to ponies was too high a price to pay for the peace and unity Harmony brought. It was time to truly bring Order to the world. And by using Discord's raw Chaos magic and filtering it, not through Harmony but through Order, Twilight proposed to use him to remake the world into a better, happier place. She had already forced him to take in the entropic imbalance caused by his predecessor's death, restoring the rate of decay to where it had been before Spike had destroyed the prior Discord. She believed she could force him to take in more of it, and then use his power to enforce a change on reality, such that all ponies would become immortal.

She was very close to a breakthrough; the major point of interference with her work now was that without control of his own magic, Discord was considerably more mortal and fragile than he had been. While his pain meant nothing to her, Twilight was not foolish enough to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs; should Discord die under the strain of the energies she was channeling through him as part of her research, it would be impossible to use him to achieve her goals. So she had adopted a measured approach. She performed her experiments twice weekly, allowing Discord several days to recover between experimental procedures, and she ceased experimentation as soon as her monitoring spells told her he was unacceptably close to death.

It was unfortunate. If he could only withstand more, she felt she could achieve her breakthrough much more quickly. Perhaps she should have words with Fluttershy about feeding him more often; as food was an important tool in his conditioning, his intake needed to be tightly rationed, but judging from how thin he had become and the fact that he was able to withstand less of her experimental protocol every time she worked with him, it was possibly rationed too low at the moment.

Yesterday had been his worst performance thus far; while heart arrhythmia was quite normal for Discord, he had gone into a rhythm so erratic it could better be described as sporadic random heartbeats within only a few minutes after the point where he'd begun begging for mercy. The begging was a metric of endurance; Discord was obviously aware that Twilight was entirely unmoved by his pain and that begging her to stop was an exercise in pointlessness, so he generally began their sessions with attempts at defiant posturing, bargaining, or, lately, complete resignation. To a certain point he would endure the experiments, screaming and writhing and otherwise responding to the pain in an expected fashion but with no attempt to persuade her to stop. Once he began begging, it was an indicator that what little reason he ever possessed had been overwhelmed entirely, and that he was no longer able to keep himself from engaging in activities he knew were futile.

Usually he could last for quite some time after the begging began, and in the past, she had been able to maintain experimental protocols through the point where the begging stopped again because Discord would lose the ability to construct any sort of coherent speech. Last night, though, it had been merely seven point six minutes after he'd begun begging before he had begun the pattern of losing consciousness from pain, then being revived by further application of pain, with periods of unconsciousness increasing in length each time, coupled with steadily increasing frequency of skipped heartbeats or extended diastole. This was usually Twilight's primary indicator that Discord was approaching his mortal limits, so she had brought the experiments to a close as soon as Discord had remained unconscious for three minutes under the continued applications of energies from the experimental apparatus.

He had attempted a new manipulation tactic as well. When she had ordered him to lie in the circle and position himself for emplacement of the restraints and magical conduits, he had not responded with sarcasm, dark humor, threats, attempts at persuasion or bargaining, or even the stoic silence coupled with heavy breathing that he had employed as of late. Instead he had begun crying. He hadn't begged – after the first two sessions he had plainly learned not to bother with begging while he was capable of consciously choosing to refrain, because it was wholly ineffectual – and he hadn't tried to resist, but he had cried, sobbing quietly the entire time that she had been preparing him for the evening's protocol. Of course, this attempt to manipulate her emotions and gain sympathy was as ineffective as every other such attempt. Twilight felt certain that with the aid of the Diadem to calm and control her emotions, she would be capable of carrying out experimentation on anyone who was not a personal friend if what was at stake was possible immortality for ponykind. And after all the other Discord had done, Twilight considered Discord's suffering during the experiments to be entirely just and fair.

All in all, it was regrettable that she couldn't be in two places at once. She needed to be here in Canterlot for Princess Celestia, but she needed to be in Ponyville for her research and to maintain the power of the Elements. Perhaps she should investigate the properties of the Mirror Pool more thoroughly...

She nodded to the guards as she entered. A familiar stallion intercepted her as she headed toward the throne room. "Twily!"

Twilight turned to face the Captain of the Royal Guard, her brother. "Shining. I would appreciate it if you would no longer call me by that foalish nickname."

Shining Armor sighed. "I know you don't like it anymore, but it feels like that's a symptom. Ever since you took on that thing you're wearing and defeated Discord with it... you've been so cold, Twilight. You can't be just a little tiny bit foalish with your old BBBFF anymore? Ever?"

She shook her head. "There's no place in my life for foalishness of any sort anymore, Shining. I have business with the Princess, so if there is nothing else we need to discuss..."

"I actually came to meet you so I could warn you. Her Highness is... not in good shape today."

Twilight's heart sank. "Is she looking at portraits of Princess Luna again?"

"That's how it started, after she raised the sun this morning. She cancelled court, again, to go through her portrait collection and eat cake for breakfast. Then she started drinking, around noon. The sommelier's under my orders to water her wine, but if it weren't for her healing powers she'd have drunk enough by now to be under the table." He looked solemn. "This isn't a good day, Twilight. If I were you, I'd consider rescheduling."

"No. If she's drunk and going through portraits of Luna again, she needs me more than usual. I will attend her for our regular meeting. If I have an opportunity, I have a sobering spell I can cast, though even when the Princess is... inebriated, she's skilled enough to block me most of the time."

"All right. I'll give orders for the guards to leave the two of you alone. If you need anything, just summon me."

Forewarned, Twilight entered the presence of the Princess of the Sun (some had taken to calling her, now, the Princess of the Sun and Moon, but never in Celestia's hearing if they knew what was good for them), and bowed. "Princess Celestia," she said.

The Princess was looking decidedly non-regal. She was in a chair at a table, her front hooves and upper body slumped over the table. A half-full wine glass and three empty bottles told part of a story; the chocolate smeared on her muzzle and the three full-size cake platters empty of anything but crumbs told another part; the portrait books open all over the table containing miniaturized magic-made copies of hundreds of paintings of Princess Luna, most probably painted by Celestia herself from memory because the portraits of a young Luna simply weren't old enough to have been painted from life, told the rest of it. If Shining Armor hadn't forewarned her, Twilight would still have known exactly what was happening.

Celestia lifted her head, her mane smeared with vanilla frosting. "Twilight?" she slurred. "You're here today?"

"Forgive me, Your Highness," Twilight said softly, and cast the sobriety spell. Celestia's horn lit up as her face registered alarm, but her drunkenness made her too slow to fully block the spell. She jerked in her seat.

"TWILIGHT!" she shouted. "How _dare_ you! You overstep yourself!"

Twilight didn't back down. "Apologies, Princess Celestia, but if you wish to grieve for Princess Luna, the _night_ is the appropriate time to do so. You have responsibilities during the day."

Celestia slumped. "I have responsibilities at night as well. I have to move the moon, now. I'll never sleep again. Ever."

"Let Chrysalis move the moon tonight."

"No. She wants... she wants..." Celestia's eyes welled with tears. "She wants to be Luna for me, and I want it, Twilight. I want her to devour me alive if she can give me a beautiful illusion that my sister is still with me. I _can't_. I want it too much. Luna would never... she'd never forgive me." A sob escaped her. "She'd never forgive me anyway, after I..."

"Princess Luna would understand. You did what you needed to," Twilight said.

"I _killed_ her, Twilight. I killed my baby sister... I killed..."

Celestia began to sob. She'd plainly blocked _some_ of the sobriety spell, even if she hadn't deflected it all. "I went for a thousand years without her, knowing what I'd done to her, and I was alone, I was all alone, but I knew she'd come back, I knew that someday it would end and either I would pay for what I'd done to her, or she would come back to me... and I had her back for less than _two years_, Twilight, less than two years and after what Discord did to her I couldn't call her back, I couldn't persuade her, and if we'd only had the Elements to purify her again but we didn't... less than _two years_, and now she's gone forever..." She pushed one of the portrait books with a hoof. "I can't do this anymore. All my strength is gone. I endured for a thousand years, I can't keep going, Twilight, I can't."

"Only a little while longer," Twilight said softly. "Just a little while, and my research will be completed. We'll make ponykind as immortal as you are, Princess. You'll never need to see a pony you love die again. And we'll use Discord to raise and lower the sun until we can train a team of unicorns in the old ways, so they can take the burden from you permanently. You only need to endure a little while longer, and then you can take a vacation. You can wear your Sunny Days disguise, and come to Ponyville with me, and live a normal life for as long as you want to. You just have to put up with the burdens of being Princess for a little while longer, Your Highness."

"It sounds so wonderful when you talk about it," Celestia said. "My faithful student. What would I do without you, Twilight?"

"You'll never need to find out," Twilight said. "I will always be ready to help and support you, my Princess, no matter what you need. I'll always be here for you."

"Thank you, thank you so much..." Celestia threw her hooves around Twilight and pulled her into a desperate hug, which gave Twilight the opportunity to cast the sobriety spell again. When Celestia finally released her, her eyes still glittered with unshed tears but her voice no longer shook, or slurred.

"My... apologies, Twilight. I... should be stronger than this." She pushed back from the table, getting out of her chair and standing on all fours. Her wings and mane were in disarray, unpreened and unbrushed. "I've tried to be stronger than this, but last night... I was moving the moon, and I couldn't stop thinking about Luna. And I knew that I can move the sun even if I'm impaired, so I knew I couldn't give into my grief at night. I had to wait until the daytime, when I'm stronger. Please forgive me."

"There's no need to ask forgiveness. There's nothing to forgive. I'm sure I would be in equally bad shape if I had to kill Shining." This wasn't true anymore. Twilight no longer felt much of anything for anypony except her Princess. Her friends were monsters, her dragon assistant was a perpetual disappointment, and her brother and her parents were always complaining about how cold and distant she'd become. It made her want to interact with them even less. "I had planned to go over the treaties with the buffalo with you today, but if you don't feel up to it, I could assist you with something else."

Celestia sighed. "I trust your judgement, Twilight. Just... read over the treaties and sign them for me if the terms seem acceptable." She lifted the cake platters and wine bottles off the table with her magic and dumped them in a chest, which she then closed. There was a family of raccoons whose job it was to clean up the detritus of the Princess' excesses, because servants weren't always the most discreet. Fluttershy had found the raccoons and talked them into taking the job. Actually they'd been thrilled enough about getting to work in the palace, with free and unhindered access to all the delightful food that ended up in the palace trash bins, that they'd willingly given up their oldest son to be Fluttershy's pet, as payment for her help in getting them this job. Twilight had ended up wiping the creature's mind and dumping him in the Everfree with amnesia after Fluttershy had come to her crying about how traumatized the raccoon had become from Fluttershy's "affection." She'd lied to Fluttershy and told her that she'd given the raccoon to a good home. The truth was, she didn't want any chance that the raccoon would recover his memories and be able to find an animal speaker somewhere to tell his experiences to. In the Everfree, either the raccoon would have ended up becoming lunch, or he would be fighting too hard for survival to worry about recovering traumatic memories.

Twilight was very glad that Fluttershy had Discord now. Unlike the innocent creatures that Fluttershy would weep over and threaten to kill herself because of what she'd done to them, Discord deserved the use Fluttershy was making of him, and apparently he satisfied her enough that she could be genuinely and cleanly caring to her innocent pets, without being compelled to take advantage of them.

She nodded. "All right, Princess. You can count on me. Is there anything else we should be going over today, or would you prefer that I get started on that?"

"Oh, there is one thing." Celestia frowned. "Did you let Discord send a _letter_ to somepony?"

Twilight stared. "What?"

"Here. I got this from Spike last night." Celestia levitated a scroll over to Twilight. "It's very strange. It claims that Discord sent me a letter, but I never got anything."

Twilight opened the scroll and read it, growing coldly angry as she did so.

_Dear Princess Celestia,_

_This is Spike, not Twilight. Did you get Discord's letter? I think he had some idea about how you could fix Twilight and the others. Sorry if it's too gross and hard to read, it was all crumpled up and bloody. I really hope it helps. – Your friend and subject Spike the dragon_

Spike had been a terrible disappointment of late. First, he'd unleashed the acceleration of entropy by killing Discord, with a magical hammer he'd stolen from the palace, possibly from Celestia's private armory. He'd meant well by it, but it had been foolish. And now, he couldn't keep to a proper dining schedule, he actually _stole_ gems from Rarity for snacking, his standards of cleanliness were merely acceptable by the standards she had held once and were wholly inadequate for what she required now... and apparently he was _conspiring_ with Discord. Despite having killed the original. She felt cold rage as she read over the letter. As if anyone needed to _fix_ her! Merging her Element with the Diadem of Order had _perfected_ her. Yes, it would be preferable if she could undo what had been done to the others, but if she did, she would have to undo her own transformation, and that was simply unacceptable. The Diadem of Order had granted her clarity, made her more efficient, allowed her to strip away the emotional weaknesses that had dragged her down in the past. She felt very little fear or anxiety any more; she was confident and in control, all the time. Spike declaring that she needed to be "fixed" was a betrayal.

And Spike had allowed _Discord_ to use him to send a letter? That was a far worse betrayal. And an idiotic one. The fact that Princess Celestia had never received the letter made it plain that it had been some sort of trick on Discord's part. A magical booby trap of some kind? Or did this version of Discord actually have allies he could summon?

"I see," she said, controlling her anger. It wouldn't do for Princess Celestia to know quite how enraged at Spike she was. "I'll need to question Discord about this later. Let me attend to the treaties today, and any other paperwork you need me to review." Tonight when she returned home, she would have a lengthy discussion with Spike on the topic of his idiocy and his betrayal. There would need to be punishment. Complete gem restriction, she thought. Spike could survive a week on a diet of pony food. He would hate it – gems were a comfort food for him, virtually the only thing he enjoyed eating, and if he was denied them for too long he would grow sick and weak, but seven days without gems would do him no permanent harm. She'd have to cast a spell to locate all the gems in his private hoards, stashed throughout the library. Taking his hoard from him would probably be as painful a punishment as being forbidden to eat gems, but he needed to be taught a lesson about who he should trust, and who he should not.

And then, she would contact Fluttershy to summon Discord, and question him.

But things needed to be done in the proper order. This was the time she had set aside to help Princess Celestia. She would not cut it short to go discipline her assistant. There would be time for that tonight.

"I suspect there's quite a lot of paperwork," Celestia said, a guilty note in her voice.

"There always is, Your Highness. We should really train some secretaries to take some of these administrative burdens off your hooves." Not that they were really on Celestia's hooves anymore. Mostly, it was Twilight handling the paperwork nowadays. A secretary for Celestia would free Twilight to do more useful things to assist her princess, but it would have to be an intelligent pony that Twilight could trust, and there were so few ponies Twilight felt she could trust any more. Even her brother was suspect. Shining Armor was willingly consorting with the Changeling Queen out of grief for his love, Twilight's old foalsitter Princess Cadance, who had died during one of the original Discord's attacks. According to Chrysalis, it had been Discord himself who had killed her. Twilight suspected it had in fact been Nightmare Moon, and that Chrysalis was lying to spare Celestia's feelings, since Discord had never to her knowledge _directly_ killed anypony. The fact that her brother would feed a Changeling his love and take her to his bed for the sake of an illusion that his fiancee was still alive made Twilight think less of him. Princess Celestia had resisted a similar temptation that Chrysalis had offered, was still resisting it even today. Twilight supposed she couldn't blame Shining Armor for not being as steadfast as the Princess, but it still dismayed her that her brother whom she'd once seen as so strong was truly this weak.

"I'm sure you'll find someone," Princess Celestia said. "You're always such a help to me, Twilight."

"I live to serve you, Princess," Twilight said. It wasn't a polite cliché. The words struck her as painfully weak, given how often sycophants used that phrase without meaning it. But Twilight sincerely meant every word.

* * *

**Harmony, 4 PM**

"Um, how does it look?" Fluttershy asked.

"Oh, my dear, you look _marvelous_," Rarity said. "Nothing can compare to your natural beauty, of course, but I dare say Mane Attraction has done a _magnificent_ job."

The hairdresser smiled brightly at the compliment. "Oh, it's hardly anything," she said. "Miss Fluttershy here is just a joy to work with. Her mane is _so_ lovely. I almost feel it was sacrilegious to dye it."

"My turn! My turn!" Pinkie Pie said, bouncing. "I wanna be a blonde! Can I be a blonde? I want the curliest bounciest yellowest mane ever! But a bright blue tail!"

"Oh, Pinkie, your tail should match your mane!" Rarity said. "Why would you ever want them two different colors?"

"Because they won't match!"

"Why _are_ you ladies getting your manes dyed today, anyway?" Mane Attraction asked. "Just a whim? Having a fillies' day out and thought you'd add some variety to your lives?"

"Um..."

"Why, yes, that's—"

"Actually because we're going to an alternate universe to fight evil versions of ourselves to rescue a friend of ours, so we want him to know how to tell the difference between good us and evil us!" Pinkie said. "And he likes things to be messed up and not matching so that's why I'm getting a blonde mane and a blue tail!"

Mane Attraction blinked. "Oh."

Rarity pulled her aside. "It's Pinkie Pie," she whispered. "Don't think about it too hard."

"Right." The hairdresser had been living in Ponyville long enough to know what every resident of Ponyville eventually figured out – don't question Pinkie Pie.

Nervously Fluttershy ran a hoof through her now-purple mane. "I hope the others are doing ok," she said.

"I am _quite_ sure they're splendid," Rarity said. "Spike is with them, and if they should run into any troubles, he can contact Princess Celestia for help."

"But I wish we could have gone with them... the Everfree is so dangerous..."

"Yes, but dear, do remember. Applejack is the strongest of us, Rainbow Dash is the fastest, and Twilight is the most powerful. _Our_ talents, while impressive, don't lend themselves quite so well to fighting the creatures of the Everfree. And—" Mane Attraction and Pinkie Pie had gone over to one of the hairdressing stations, Mane rinsing Pinkie's hair with a small hose and Pinkie giggling, announcing that it tickled. "It's important that we be able to reassure Discord that we are ourselves, and not those monstrous parodies who've been holding him prisoner, just as you suggested," she said softly. Discord was not exactly beloved in Ponyville, so the mares had decided not to let anypony know that their mission involved him. "Applejack doesn't believe in dyeing her mane, Rainbow Dash was already in Cloudsdale and with a mane like hers, I would think it a crime to dye it – and the alternate Twilight is probably not an alicorn. And we cannot exactly dye Spike's scales. So the logical answer was that the three of us get the mane coloring while the rest of them go get a cutting from the Tree of Harmony. You know how _vitally_ important it will be for Discord to be able to tell that you're the correct Fluttershy."

Fluttershy nodded. _More than you know_, she thought. Rarity hadn't read the letter and Princess Celestia hadn't taken her aside to explain who was doing what over there, so Rarity didn't know that the other Fluttershy was Discord's primary torturer. On the carriage ride back to Ponyville, Fluttershy had been wondering aloud how they could distinguish themselves from their counterparts, for Discord's sake – she hadn't said so to the others, but she wanted him to _know_, the moment he saw her, that he was being rescued, that she and her friends were _his_ friends and not his tormentors. Rarity had suggested the mane dye, and after some discussion, it was agreed that Twilight would go catch up with Rainbow Dash and bring her back to the Everfree Forest so she could accompany Twilight and Applejack to go get a cutting from the Tree, while Rarity, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie got mane dye jobs. Twilight had asked Applejack if she was _sure_ she didn't want to get hers done as well, given what Discord had said in the letter, but Applejack had pointed out that changing her appearance to distinguish herself from her alternate self was hardly honest, and that she'd just have to find a different way to do it.

Fluttershy really, really, really didn't want to read that letter, but she was beginning to think she needed to. Discord would need medical treatment and some kind of psychological support, and without knowing what Twilight and Applejack and Spike knew about what was happening to him, she wouldn't know what needed to be done. It wasn't very likely that Discord would tell her, or anypony. She was a little bit surprised he'd written such a long letter with as much detail as he apparently put in it; Twilight had said he was under an honesty spell that had compelled him to write more than he'd probably have preferred, but even so she would have thought he would try to keep it short.

She sighed. "It's just, I know the Everfree and I get along with most of the creatures there," she said. "I know Twilight and Rainbow and Applejack can fight, but if I was with them and there was a scary creature, maybe I could talk to it and make friends with it so nopony would _have_ to fight. But, I know this is important. I want him to know I'm not her when he sees me, so I know I needed to do this. I just... worry." Fluttershy looked at Rarity. "Doesn't it feel a little, um, silly or wasteful or something to be getting our manes done when our friends might be in danger?"

"Oh no no, not at all! We're not doing this for frivolity's sake after all. Consider this. We're going on a rescue mission to save somepony – well, actually, he isn't a pony but you know what I meant – who's suffered _terribly_ at the hooves of ponies who look identical to us. It's absolutely essential to the success of our mission that we have some means by which he can tell the difference." If it was really absolutely essential, Fluttershy thought, Twilight would have thought of it, not herself and Rarity... but on the other hand she _did_ think it was important. "However, we may still need to use illusion spells to disguise ourselves as our counterparts, so having a professional job done that will easily tolerate a simple illusion spell is important. If we'd tried to use home dye kits we might have ended up with uneven or blotchy results, and we'd need more than a simple color spell, which might require Twilight to maintain. As it is, _I_ can cast a spell to make your mane look its original color again." Rarity sighed. "I do wish Pinkie hadn't chosen two different colors, though. That will make matters complicated."

"She's doing it to make Discord feel better once we find him."

"I am _aware_ of why she's doing it, and I can respect her wishes, but I would think he would be grateful to be rescued no matter what we look like, and I feel having a more consistent look would make it easier for me to maintain a color illusion spell if she needs to look like their Pinkie." She sighed again, deeply. "But, Pinkie will be Pinkie, I suppose. Now _I_ must address the serious issue of what color to choose for my own mane. I'd considered a dark shade of purple, but after you chose such a charming lavender for your own mane, I certainly wouldn't want to look as if I was trying to infringe on your look."

"Rarity, any color you want to dye your mane is okay with me. I didn't do it to, um, have a special look or anything. Um, I'm not really all that into that whole thing? So if you want to be purple I, I think you would look really nice with purple and you should do it, um, if that's what you want to do."

She looked over at Pinkie Pie. The peroxide needed to wash the pink out of Pinkie's mane to make room for a lighter color had made the curly mane even frizzier, so it was now almost a cloud around Pinkie's head, an effect accentuated by how pale it had become. Pinkie was giggling wildly at herself in the mirror, pointing a hoof and declaring that all she needed now were hair clips decorated with little pegasi. "Then I'll really be an air head!" she said, laughing.

"Well, to really be an air head, wouldn't we have to dye your coat blue?" Mane Attraction asked.

"Oh, do you think—"

Rarity was instantly at the two mares' side. "_No_, Pinkie. Don't dye your coat! We don't have time." She turned to Mane Attraction. "By no means absolutely do not dye her coat right now. She can come back later if she wants to try it." She sighed deeply. "Although I am convinced it would be a perfect disaster."

Fluttershy turned away. Pinkie was being goofy and silly, Rarity was obsessing over looks. They were always like that, even when they were preparing for a serious mission. She wouldn't ever want them to change; they were her friends and this was how they were. It didn't mean they weren't taking this seriously.

But they didn't know what she knew. They hadn't read the letter either, and Princess Celestia hadn't taken them aside to give them more details, and neither of them had the burden of knowing that they could have kept Discord from putting himself in danger in the first place, and Fluttershy wasn't entirely certain Rarity even really cared except in the abstract. Of course Rarity wouldn't want to see anypony – or any_one_ – tortured, but she didn't personally _like_ Discord, she didn't consider him a friend. It wasn't tearing her up inside that he was suffering. And Fluttershy was fairly sure that it _was_ tearing at Pinkie, but Pinkie was so very good at hiding any negative emotions under her bubbleheaded façade. If it hadn't been for Pinkie's breakdown over never having had a chance to give Discord a party, Fluttershy wouldn't know this was bothering Pinkie at all.

She felt so isolated, and she didn't know why. Her friends were on her side, they were all going to go with her to save Discord. No one but Rainbow Dash had even had any reservations about it, and Rainbow's had disappeared as soon as Princess Celestia had explained Discord's history. But for them, it wasn't personal, or at least not nearly as personal as it was for her. And she couldn't _tell_ any of them how personal it was for her. She'd only had the courage to tell Princess Celestia how she felt because the Princess had just admitted to having felt the same way herself, thousands of years ago. None of them liked Discord. How could she possibly explain to them how she felt about him, when he went out of his way to be considerably more disagreeable and obnoxious around them than he ever was when he was alone with her? They never saw the side of him she saw because he never let them see it. It wasn't their fault, and yet... it meant she couldn't imagine them understanding her, or sympathizing.

So for them, they were carrying out a mission of mercy, or acting on behalf of Princess Celestia. None of them were out to rescue someone they... really cared about. Usually when they all went on a mission together, Fluttershy felt as if her friends were on the same page she was, that they were not only united in common purpose but in common motive and common emotion as well. Right now... maybe it was just as well they no longer had the Elements of Harmony to use on this mission, because she didn't feel very harmonious right now.

* * *

"All right, you critters, listen up," Applejack said to Fluttershy's menagerie. "I know you understand me, even if I can't understand you, so pay attention. Fluttershy's going on a mission; I'm sure you're all familiar with her doing this kind of thing by now. So you're all gonna get in this here wagon, and I'm gonna take you over to my farm, where my Granny and my sister and brother are gonna take care of y'all until Fluttershy and I get back."

Behind her back, Big Mac and the Cutie Mark Crusaders were loading the chickens' coop onto a large flatbed wagon. "We're gonna bring your coops, and your hutches, and all that stuff you live in. Angel Bunny, I know you're a really smart little rabbit, so I'm expecting you to gather up all the stuff you want to bring that's important and bring it out here where we can load it up too." Angel Bunny glared at her. "Now don't you go trying to give me grief, I ain't Fluttershy and it's no never mind to me if I have to leave you here to fetch for yourself while she's gone. You can have my Granny to make you your meals and my little sis to brush your fur out like Fluttershy says you like, or you can live in an empty house and make do for yourself. Your choice." With a final glare, the rabbit hopped off into the house. Applejack was fairly sure he was going to go get his stuff.

Twilight had had to go fly to Cloudsdale to get Rainbow Dash so they could go together into the Everfree to get a cutting from the Tree, assuming the Tree would let them do that. The others were all in town getting their manes dyed, which Applejack was trying very, very hard not to consider a frivolous waste of time. Rarity and Fluttershy had had a good point about being able to tell the difference between them and their evil selves. She just couldn't bring herself to truck with the notion of going and getting a mane dye as an important part of preparing for a rescue mission. So instead, she'd gotten her brother, her sister, and her sisters' friends (who were contemplating the possibility of cutie marks in being movers) to help her gather up Fluttershy's pets and move them to Sweet Apple Acres. The farm had more room for animals and more ponies to help out with their care than any of the others had at their place. Twi and Rainbow ought to be back shortly, she hoped, and then they could go on their trip to the Everfree, and Fluttershy could get a good night's sleep tonight knowing her animal friends were all squared away and safe in their temporary home.

"Sis, are we bringing the bird feeders?" Apple Bloom called.

"Nope, don't think so. Those are to feed the wild birds that come outta the Everfree, I think. We just need to make sure the bird bath's topped off with water and all the feeders are full, and if we're gone longer'n a few days, you fillies could come out and check, right?"

"Sure thing."

Angel Bunny reappeared, dragging a blanket and a small bed, which he had filled with various toys, a brush, two bowls, a cup, and other paraphernalia. "Land sakes, rabbit, you got as much stuff there of your own as half the foals in this town," Applejack said. "I do dearly hope you treat Fluttershy with the respect and love she deserves, for all she does for you." The rabbit chittered, but unlike Fluttershy, Applejack wasn't an animal speaker and hadn't the vaguest idea what Angel had just said. "Sweetie Belle, think you could help this lil bunny load up his stuff?"

"Okay!" Sweetie Belle's control of her telekinesis was hardly perfect, but it was sufficient to gather up the bunny's belongings and load them into Applejack's cart.

"We all good here?" A chorus of animal sounds resounded. Applejack interpreted that as a "yes." "All right, then, here we go."

* * *

In the library, Spike ran down Twilight's checklist, gathering the library's portion of what had been on the list. "Spellbooks that Twilight listed here, check. Library closed, sign up, check. Owlowliscious, you know to go to Sweet Apple Acres tomorrow morning before you go to bed, right?"

The sleepy owl, annoyed at being woken so long before nighttime, responded with an exasperated "Whoooo."

"Okay, just checking. Hmm." Spike took a deep breath. "Well. I kind of don't _want_ to do this, but... if he let Discord send that letter, and if his Rarity isn't generous anymore... then maybe he's not a bad guy like the ponies turned into, and maybe he's bribable." Another deep breath, and then before he could regret it, Spike bagged up several gems and stashed them with the growing pack of supplies. It violated every dragon instinct he possessed to willingly consider giving his gems away, even to another him, even for a good cause, but Spike had long known he'd need to fight his dragon instincts to be someone the ponies could respect as good.

"Anyway, Rarity will be proud of me for thinking of it," he mused to himself, which perked him up. Rarity's goodwill was a more valuable treasure to him than any number of gems. And if the other Rarity had turned selfish and greedy, then the other Spike might be short on gems, and maybe could be persuaded to help the party out in exchange. "Hopefully it won't come up. We're just supposed to go to Other Fluttershy's house, break into the basement, get Discord out and get home. But just in case. Twilight always says we should plan for contingencies." He wrote at the bottom of the list "Gems for possibly bribing Other Spike if needed" and checked it off.

* * *

"You gotta keep up, slowpoke!" Rainbow Dash taunted. "You've been flying a few weeks now, and you're a princess. You ought to be faster than this!"

"Faster... than... you?" Twilight gasped, wings beating harder and faster than they had since she'd flown with Spike from Canterlot to Ponyville while Discord's vines had been running riot. "Is... that... possible?"

"No way, course not! But I'm not _going_ that fast. You ought to be able to keep up!"

"Rainbow... we're going... into... dangerous forest... to get... Tree of Harmony. I can't... be totally... wiped... when we get there."

"Yeah, but we want to get in and out before nightfall, and last time, we had to walk like an hour or something before we got to the Tree. It isn't like a short distance inside, and the Everfree being the Everfree, it's not like we can fly over and just drop down where we want to go, either."

"I'm... not... that fast."

"Well, you gotta practice more, slowpoke! I mean your wings are huge, it's not like you shouldn't be able to kick _most_ pegasi's flank in the air."

"How... fast... were you... when your wings were... a few months old?"

"Hey, I'll have you know I was flying in _day care_."

"Sure... as a _toddler._ Bet... not... when you... were... few month old infant."

"Well, I could ask my dad, but it wasn't like I knew how to walk then either. Besides you're making excuses! I keep telling you to come out with me and practice."

"I've... barely mastered... not crashing!"

"And that's why you need more practice!"

Twilight sighed. Rainbow Dash was insufferable. But she was right. It was already four in the afternoon, and they had to get to the Everfree Forest, get in, get to the Tree, and get back out, before night fell around eight pm. "Maybe... I'll have Spike... ask Princess... Celestia... to extend... the sunset?"

"Maybe you could just fly faster instead of inconveniencing all of freaking Equestria just cause you're too slow?"

The really amazingly annoying thing about this, Twilight reflected, was that Rainbow Dash was laden down with a turtle, who'd be staying at Sweet Apple Acres with the other pets, two jars of wing rub, and a flight trophy she was wearing around her neck where she would once have carried her Element of Harmony, and she was _still_ outpacing the exhausted Twilight without breaking a sweat, as nearly as Twilight could see.

"Fine." She pumped burning wing muscles faster, harder, pushing herself. "And when... I pass out... before I get there... _you_ can do... any magic we need!"

"You're not gonna pass out. Come on. You can do it, Twilight. You can do _anything_ you put your mind to, you know that. Now let's move!"

**Opposition, 5 PM**

Discord knelt on the ground in the apple orchard on all fours, head lowered, breathing deeply to try to control the terror building in him as Applejack raged at him at his inability to fill baskets of apples evenly. She kept picking things for him to do that required the ability to maintain order, to identify a pattern and _follow_ it, and the few times Discord had tried to plead with her that he simply wasn't capable of doing those things, Applejack had said he was making excuses and beaten him before he even began the task, and then beat him again when, predictably, he'd failed to do it properly. He knew better now. The whole _point_ to these tasks was to give him a job he couldn't possibly do well so he could be beaten for failing to do it. They wanted him to be terrified of failure, to throw himself body and soul into trying to complete any task they gave him however stupid and unsuited for him it was.

The fact that he knew what they were up to didn't change the fact that it was working, unfortunately.

"Wings flat and don't move," Applejack ordered. "Looks like you need another lesson in doin' a good job."

At this point he doubted he could make matters worse for himself. "I'd do a much better job if you gave me a job I was at all capable of doing," he said bitterly even as he obeyed, extending and then lowering his wings as if he were flapping them downward, because if he didn't obey his body would just do it and he hated that. "You just want an excuse to punish me, admit it."

"Well, it ain't no secret that I _hate_ you, you lyin', treacherous piece of dung," Applejack said, "but if you could actually do the job I gave you, I'd be fair to ya. Twilight says you can't disobey, but sure as shootin' I reckon you can do a bad job on purpose, and I aim to break you of that."

"I'm not doing a bad job on purpose! What part of 'spirit of Chaos' makes you think I can fill baskets so they come out _evenly_? I tried! I just can't _do_ it!"

"Well, tough for you, then," Applejack said. "Maybe you need to learn howta do a good job even when you don't like the work. Now shut up, I don't wanna hear any more of your excuses."

It wasn't that he didn't like the work, he thought angrily. He didn't, but that wasn't why he wasn't doing a good job. It was because he _couldn't_. And the task was utterly pointless anyway and there was no reason to have him doing this and it was just an excuse to—

Despite himself, Discord cried out in fear when he heard the whistling noise, even before the line of sharp-edged gems cracked against his back with full force. As the lash hit, his cry of fear turned into a scream of pain. He wasn't tied right now; he wanted desperately to get up and run, to flap his wings and fly, to do anything except lie here still for the blows, but he'd been ordered not to move, so he couldn't.

"You're gonna learn," Applejack said, and the whip came cracking down again, the gems that the rope was tied through cutting viciously into his flesh. He screamed again. "If I gotta take all the skin off your back, sooner or later you're gonna learn. You got a job to do, you do a good job, whether you want that job or not." Another blow, and another, and another, and all he could hear was the crack of the whip and the blood roaring in his ears and the sound of his own screams, and another, until he lost count, not that he was really all that good at counting in the first place. He put his head all the way down on the ground and put his paws over his face, whining like a dog, trying to shut out the world of pain, but the blows kept coming.

A sob broke free from his throat, finally. And then another after the next lash fell, and another, and then he was crying, his body racked with sobs between his screams, as the whip slashed against him again and again. He'd tried so hard to be strong, to resist the pain, not to give his tormentor the satisfaction of breaking him down like this, but he was helpless and he strongly suspected the point to this was to break him down, so that if he never started crying and begging, it would never end.

One of the lashes hit him in the upper part of his back, near his neck, where the skin under his fur had no protective scales at all and was entirely soft pony skin. There, even the rope itself was a stinging agony, and the gems embedded in it stabbed into him deeper and more painfully than on his draconic tail or in the lower regions of his back where his skin was protected by dragon scales under his fur. His neck arched up as he screamed, his muscles everywhere tensing as if he were about to leap away, but the motion couldn't complete because the obedience spell wouldn't let him leap or fly. "Please stop," he pleaded at last, pride broken and all ability to resist begging shattered by the pain. "Please, please stop, please..."

"You sorry yet?" Applejack grunted, swinging the whip down on him again.

"Yes! Yes, I'm sorry!"

This time she paused the beating for a moment. "You sorry because you screwed up the job, or you sorry that you got caught at it and you're gettin' punished?"

"I'm sorry I'm getting punished!" he howled, and cringed in renewed terror when he heard what had just come out of his mouth. The truth-telling spell wouldn't allow him to lie and say what she wanted to hear... and that meant there would be more pain, more of the relentless beating. But it was true. He _wasn't_ sorry he'd screwed up the job, because he couldn't possibly do a good job at something so pointless and orderly as making the apple baskets evenly packed. It was in his nature, and he wasn't ashamed of his nature, he wasn't sorry for what he was, so how could he actually be sorry for failing to do something it was antithetical to his nature to do?

"I thought so, you piece of trash!" Applejack shouted at him, and renewed beating him with greater vigor. The whip slashed at his bat wing, tearing holes in the delicate skin and muscles; it tore at his back and his upper tail, leaving bloody slashes and cuts all over him. Discord dug his claws into the dirt as hard as he could, trying to endure, as he sobbed and screamed. Over and over he tried to move his muscles, summon magic, do _anything_ to get away from this torture, and over and over he was reminded that he had no control. The obedience spell bound him as tightly as the spell that had turned him to stone once had; the order not to move overrode his every attempt to get control of his body back and flee or shield himself. At that he was lucky, he thought; the spell wasn't demanding total immobility from him, simply that he stay still and offer no resistance to the beating. He could still clench his fists, clutch at the dirt below him with his claws, grit his teeth, drive his fang through his bottom lip so the pain in his lip would blot the pain in his back for precious seconds. He could still cry, scream, beg. He just couldn't escape.

"You tell me you're sorry you screwed up those baskets, and you _mean_ it, or so help me you creature I will whip you to bloody pieces!"

"I can't! I can't make baskets come out evenly! Consistency is the opposite of chaos, please, please, I tried, please, I can't! Please stop, please, I tried, I tried..."

"You gonna tell me you're sorry? Are ya?" The lash came down again and again, and it seemed to him that each blow was more vicious than the last, as she demanded something from him that the honesty spell binding him wouldn't permit him to give. He shrieked, and pleaded, and wept with agony, but nothing stopped her from bringing her whip down on him over and over.

Eventually something inside him broke, something shifted and for a moment he felt sick guilt and regret at what he was, that he was not like the ponies, not like practically any other creature on Equestria, that he had limitations they didn't share. That without his magic, his affiliation with Chaos crippled him in some ways, and even Pinkie Pie was better at getting by in a world of Order than he was. And in that moment of hating himself and wishing he was anything other than what he was, he could finally say the words Applejack wanted to hear, because he could finally sincerely mean them. "I'm sorry," he sobbed. "Please, I'll do better, I promise, please, I'm sorry ..."

"You _really_ sorry now? You sorry you failed that job, not just that you got caught at it?"

"Yes! I'm sorry I failed, I'm sorry, please, I'm sorry, please stop, I'll do it right next time, I'm sorry, please..."

And Applejack finally put the whip down. "Well, that's better, sugarcube," she said, her rough voice almost kind. "Ain't no shame in failing, long as you did your best and you're genuinely sorry you couldn't do better."

He wanted to protest that he _had_ done his best, except that that couldn't be true, he couldn't let that be true because if he had done his best and still failed he would fail every time and then there would never be an end to the beatings until he died, or until his Twilight Sparkle came to rescue him, which was basically impossible so it would be until he died, and he was technically immortal so even without his magic he wasn't 100% sure he _could_ die. Well, they could murder him with that hammer the little dragon had killed his counterpart with, but why would they when they could just keep beating him bloody? "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he cried, brokenly. "I'll do better, I promise, please, I'm sorry..."

So much pain. He'd thought he knew pain. He'd been beaten as a child, but never this severely; he'd taken injuries in battle, before coming into the full power of his potential and in fights with creatures of his own power class, but he'd given better than he'd gotten and in the heat of combat, pain could be exhilarating; he'd been turned to stone, twice, but that had been moments of excruciating pain and then cold nothingness. Nothing like this.

"I'm proud of ya, finally recognizin' that you did bad," Applejack said. "You stay right here, I'm gonna get you something."

She left. Discord twisted his head around so he could see the extent of the damage. Dark red rivulets ran all over his back, and in some places, the skin hung loose and what was underneath was raw red meat. His bat wing was ruined, more holes in it than in a changeling's legs, all bleeding. He lowered his head again. Nothing he couldn't heal once they gave him permission to do it, but looking at the ruin they periodically left his body in made him shudder in horror and grief.

He closed his eyes, trying desperately to get control of himself, to stop crying. He was the avatar of chaos. He had destroyed the dragon empire, he had brought himself back from the dead more than once, he had ruled Equestria and done anything he wanted to do for nearly a thousand years. He had traveled the dimensional gates, he had walked in the land of the dead, he had changed the face of his world forever. He was not some weak, helpless little pony to cry because somepony was being mean to him. He was disharmony incarnate. He should be stronger than this.

But just as he'd been completely unable to break himself free from the stone as long as those who had bound him still held their Elements – it hadn't been until the Elements had transferred from Celestia to the new Bearers that the seal had broken and allowed him to start trying to work his way free – he was completely unable to break the spells that Twilight Sparkle had layered onto him via the transformed Elements of this timeline. He was fairly sure that the Elements of his home dimension couldn't even do this, that maybe they could have handled the spells of honesty and loyalty but the obedience spell was far, far too dark to funnel through the Elements that he knew. Except that he'd left behind the Elements that he knew to come here because he'd wanted to misbehave without Fluttershy getting angry with him. So he'd come to a dimension where his previous self was dead. And now he'd learned the hard way _why_ his previous self was dead here, why someone – not somepony, it had been a baby dragon actually – had hated him enough to kill him.

His other self, the one who had belonged here, had changed the Elements, forced them to absorb their opposites. He wasn't entirely sure how that worked in Twilight's case; the Element of Magic had no inherent opposite. When he looked at her he kept thinking he knew what was wrong with her, but with his magic as limited as she'd made it he couldn't quite figure it out, only that being anywhere near her made his skin crawl and filled him with visceral horror, sometimes even brief horrifying hallucinations that he was turning to stone again. Flashbacks. His own Twilight didn't trigger flashbacks like that in him, and this one had started doing it from the moment he'd first encountered her, when he'd still had his powers and she hadn't defeated him yet, so it was something about her, not about the situation he was in. It didn't _help_ that she tortured him in interrogations or experimentation on a regular basis, but that wasn't the original reason. But it hardly mattered; even if he knew exactly what was wrong with this world's Twilight, he couldn't fix it. She'd taken control of his magic from him.

The obedience spell constrained him as tightly as the stoning spell once had. The collar around his neck restrained his magic so that he could only use it when ordered to, but it was not what enforced his obedience. When he was given an order, he could choose to obey it more or less of his own volition, or he could choose to try to refuse, at which point the spell would take control of his muscles and move him like a puppet. It had limitations; the spell could only compel him to use his magic if he was given precise instructions about what exactly to do, because it couldn't compel him to think certain thoughts. Improperly worded instructions on how to use his magic could allow him far more freedom than the Elements of this world wanted him to have. So they rarely ordered him to use his magic, unless they were telling him to do something very specific.

Instead they used him as a slave, ordering him to perform tasks that he could use his physical body to do. That wasn't the endgame, he was sure. That was pointless. Maybe they were enjoying his enslavement as revenge – certainly Applejack seemed to enjoy beating him and ordering him around – but that wasn't the goal in and of itself, he was quite certain. The goal was to break him to the point where they could give him instructions and trust him to use his own intelligence and judgement to carry them out in exactly the way they wanted without him hunting for and finding loopholes, and then they'd be able to force him to use his magic.

He was hoping desperately he'd be dead before he got to that point, but there were days he felt so hopeless he wondered why he was even trying to resist. Maybe if he just gave in and let them break him it wouldn't hurt so much. Maybe they'd stop torturing him all the time if he stopped making sarcastic wisecracks and pleading with them and trying to fight his orders, if he just gave up and did whatever they wanted without resistance. But he couldn't do that. Resistance to authority was a fundamental part of his nature, an aspect of chaos and disharmony, and if he stopped resisting, he would stop being _him_. Not that he was really enjoying being himself right now, but the thought of being anything else still filled him with greater horror than the thought of being tortured... at least most of the time.

He squeezed his eyes even more tightly closed at the sudden burning rush of shame as he remembered. Not five minutes ago, he'd felt ashamed of who and what he was, he'd _wanted_ to be something else, because what he was guaranteed him endless pain and just for a few moments, he'd broken and wanted to be something he was not. He'd thought only Fluttercruel could do that to him. If now Applejack was pushing him to that edge as well... how long before he fell over the side permanently and stayed there? How long before the desire to escape pain eclipsed the desire to be Discord, and he became what it was they wanted him to be?

He heard hoofsteps, and cringed. Tentatively he opened one eye, as if opening them both would make whatever terror he was faced with now _more_ real. But Applejack was only carrying a tray in her mouth, not preparing to whip him again.

She set it down in front of him. There were four apples on the tray. Despite the pain he was in, Discord's mouth watered, his eyes fixed on the apples like they were lifebuoys and he was drowning. He was so hungry, all the time; even the agony in his back and his wing couldn't overwhelm the craving for food when something that would actually taste good was put in front of him. All he'd had to eat all day was a bowl of hay with hot sauce, and all he'd had to eat yesterday were things so disgusting they couldn't even be considered food and then he'd vomited them all up anyway. Fluttercruel never gave him enough to eat and none of it tasted good; when she wasn't deliberately feeding him things that were appallingly disgusting and forcing him to eat them to make him feel sick, she was feeding him a subsistence level of hay and oats and grass and other very, very basic, boring pony fare. Sometimes she gave him raw eggs because he needed high levels of dietary protein, unlike a pony; on occasion as a reward she gave him a bowl of milk. Not chocolate milk, regular milk, but it was the sweetest substance she allowed him to consume and when she let him have some, he actually felt pathetically grateful to her, even if she made him drink it from a bowl like a pet and not from a cup. He never got _anything_ as nice as an apple.

When he'd had his powers and freedom, natural apples would have bored him. Now his gaze was riveted to them like a dragon to gems. He had been ordered not to eat any of the apples when he worked here, a torment that maddened him given how hungry he was and how delicious they looked in his desperate state... but why would she be putting them on a tray and laying them before him if she wasn't feeding them to him? Was this another trick? A game to torture him? Or did she really mean to feed him such wonderful sweet things?

Discord held himself still, trembling. _Was_ this a trick? This version of Applejack did love to play cruel tricks on him, forcing him into no-win situations or presenting him with overwhelming temptations and then punishing him for succumbing. He wasn't going to give in this time. He wasn't going to let her trick him into earning another punishment. He would be good.

"Go ahead, hon," Applejack said. "These four are for you. You earned 'em bein' honest with me and acceptin' what you did was wrong. You can eat 'em."

He needed no other encouragement. Discord's head lunged forward and he devoured the apples whole, unconcerned with cores and seeds, chewing them just enough to release the delicious sweet flavor into his mouth. The first two, he was hungry enough to eat too quickly, barely getting to taste them before his hunger compelled him to swallow them down; the next two he savored, chewing and sucking until the flavor had all been extracted. They tasted so _good_. He was dehydrated from blood loss, tears, and working in the hot sun for hours, and the sweet liquid juices of the apple were so soothing and delicious and necessary he almost forgot the horrible pain in his back and wings. Almost.

When he was finished, when his belly was almost full enough to stop cramping in pain and his throat was almost quenched enough to not feel cracked and dry any longer, he realized, too late, what the apples had been about. Carrot and stick training. Applejack had beaten him until he'd twisted his very mind around to meet what she required of him, which was that he felt shame for what he was and wished he could change; and then she'd given him an extravagant reward, or at least extravagant in the context of his current hellish existence, to reinforce the conditioning.

Discord whimpered, recognizing the trap he'd just fallen into. He was the spirit of disharmony; he understood how torture and brainwashing worked, he'd used many of these techniques himself, since his mind control spells weren't permanent but proper conditioning could be. He'd never done anything to anypony as horrible as what was being done to him, but the principles were the same. Now that he'd received and accepted the reward, some part of his mind would associate giving in and hating himself with not just the end of pain but with the pleasure of delicious food... and food was a weakness of his anyway, he'd spent much of his childhood as a starving scavenger and even becoming nigh-omnipotent had never quite washed the obsession with food away. And the next time, that tiny part of his mind would betray him for the reward, and he would give in more easily. And so on until he was totally subservient.

And yet what was he supposed to do? He _couldn't_ refuse food right now. He was too hungry and miserable. He didn't have the strength to refuse food that wasn't disgusting, let alone food that was actively delicious. How was he supposed to protect himself from this?

"Fluttershy's on her way to pick you up," Applejack said, and Discord cringed in terror again. "I told her you needed a whippin' today but you did good finally and owned up to your own wrongdoin'. She'll bandage you up."

She tied a rope around a tree and knotted the end of it through the loop in the back of his collar, leashing him. "Now, you don't go tryin' to get yourself free of that, mind," she said, and the dull horror took hold again as it had so many times before, the order sinking into him and denying him the ability to free himself. He wasn't sure what was worse, when he was tied paw and hoof and literally couldn't do anything to get free, or when he was left unbound or bound more lightly, with the physical capability of freeing himself, and the compulsion of the spell on him prevented him from using that capability no matter how badly he wanted to.

Applejack left him there. Discord wasn't allowed to untie himself from the tree, and he hurt too badly to move very much, but when he was sure she was gone, he nosed around the tree, dragging his injured body slowly, until he found a half-rotten apple that had fallen to the ground prematurely. With his talon, he sliced away the rotten parts, and then he stuffed the remainder in his mouth, savoring it as long as he dared. He found two more, one riddled with worms, which were protein and better than what Fluttercruel usually fed him for protein so he ate the entire wormy apple, and another mostly rotted one that had been lying on the orchard ground. Their actual taste wasn't nearly as delicious as the ripe, healthy ones Applejack had fed him, but the taste they left in his mind and soul was wonderful, much sweeter than his reward for breaking had been. He'd taken these for himself, despite the various restraints on him; he'd exercised his nature as a spirit of trickery and rule-breaking and strengthened himself against the torture the same way that Applejack's treats had weakened him. If he hadn't been so weak and in so much pain and so afraid of getting caught at this, he would have laughed heartily.

He used his tail to brush fallen leaves over the tracks his body had left, taking especial care to cover any bloodstains, so nopony would know he had moved... he hadn't been ordered not to, but he knew that if Applejack had guessed that he would crawl around looking for rotten apples to eat rather than depending entirely on her conditional "generosity", she _would_ have ordered him not to. So he was getting away with something, which made him feel a savage happiness and triumph totally out of proportion to the size of the victory but also fear, because if he was getting away with something he could get caught. Then he settled himself back into the bloody depression in the fallen leaves that he'd been lying in after Applejack had beaten him, to wait for his cruel captor to come for him and do... whatever she was going to do.

It turned out that unpredictability in pony behavior was much, much less fun when the range of possible reactions he might get from the pony in question went from "soothing ointments and bandages and cooing words of comfort" to "vicious screaming, brutal torture and occasional violent rape with objects or animals." Maybe if Fluttercruel was always nothing but a sadistic tormentor, he could resist what she was doing to his mind better, but the fact that she was often gentle and sweet kept him unable to muster all of his necessary emotional defenses against her all the time. Who would have thought that _he_ of all beings would ever crave predictability? He'd give a great deal to know what Fluttercruel was going to do to him _before_ she did it.

He was tired, and weak, and he hurt so much, and the shade of the apple tree was soothing after he'd been forced to sort apples in the heat of the field, nothing to protect him from Celestia's brutal sunshine all day long. He wanted so much to sleep. It was horribly boring, lying here tied to the apple tree, nothing to do, unable to try to escape, and if he could sleep he could escape the pain and fear and boredom for at least a little while. But he was too afraid of what Fluttercruel would do when she got here; he couldn't bring himself to let go and drift off to sleep when she was coming and might do anything to him.

At least he'd stolen those three fallen apples. That counted for something. He clung to that. Maybe he had broken for a few minutes under the torture, but he hadn't stayed that way. He'd come back to himself. He was still totally disobedient and unruly in his heart, even if it was so very infrequently that he found a way to express it despite the spells binding him.

And maybe the real Twilight Sparkle, the one from his universe, had gotten the letter he'd sent yesterday and would muster up a rescue expedition and come and save him.

Yeah, as if.


	4. Cruel Kindness

**Opposition, 6 PM**

Fluttercruel was in her gentle aspect when she arrived, which made Discord struggle not to cry with relief. He cried so much lately. It was completely humiliating. He'd even cried in front of Twilight last night, hunger weakening him to the point where he hadn't been able to endure being prepared for another torture session without breaking down in tears of despair. He _had_ to muster up more strength than this. Apparently, seeing him already covered in blood and injuries that she didn't have to inflict on him, and hearing from Applejack that he'd broken at the end and therefore deserved to be rewarded for breaking, not punished further for resisting, triggered Fluttercruel's kindness instincts, and she bandaged and treated his wounds with compassion, using a great deal of painkilling salve. By the time she was done he couldn't feel his damaged wing anymore, which was an improvement over the agony it had been in.

She led him back to her home the usual way, the leash on his collar attached to a harness around her hoof, forcing him to walk on all fours. Discord was as adept at moving on all fours as he was at going bipedal, but they meant different things to him; fours was for covering distance rapidly or for sneaking, bipedal was for interacting with ponies since it allowed him to use his full height for its intimidation value. Being forced to walk through Ponyville, injured, at Fluttercruel's pace, on all fours with a leash around his neck, was sickeningly humiliating.

At least she didn't have a muzzle on him this time. Or a bridle and a bit in his mouth. If a pony put reins on another pony in public it would be viewed as obscene, a bedroom game that the participants should have kept in the bedroom; but on a creature that wasn't a pony, it made ponies think not of kinky sex games, but of pets and of dangerous wild animals being restrained to tame them. Most ponies weren't xenophilic enough to recognize him as a potential sex object, so Fluttercruel could drag him through the town in abject slavery without embarrassing herself; her fellow townsfolk saw what she was doing as playing her role as an Element of Harmony and taming the cruel chaos monster, not as what it actually was, a sexualized dominance ploy. So Discord got to be simultaneously humiliated that he was being viewed as an animal rather than a sentient being, and that his captor was enjoying his humiliation and submission entirely too much and in thoroughly unhealthy ways.

In the beginning she'd never taken him anywhere without muzzling or bridling him first, so he'd never been able to talk and prove himself sentient; now she let him keep his mouth free so long as he didn't use it, but the moment he tried to talk she'd order him to conjure a muzzle or bridle around himself. Of course, the ponies of Ponyville knew who he was, and they feared and hated him for it, but Discord knew very well that ponies would automatically perceive a large predator as a fierce and dangerous beast rather than an intelligent being like themselves unless said predator talked, and at his size and with the natural weaponry on his body, the parts of him that were ponylike were not enough to make ponies perceive him as one of them. So he knew, as he walked through the town silently, that even though they knew who he was and even though they knew he was intelligent, they were perceiving him at some level as a monster, a mindless vicious animal, that Fluttercruel was taming - not a being with the same feelings and intelligence as a pony who was being mistreated and enslaved, not even a criminal who deserved to be publicly humiliated. An animal.

He wondered if Celestia had told Fluttercruel about his past (or if he'd even _had_ the same past in this timeline), or if she'd just managed to get lucky and hit on the ancient sore spot. It had been thousands of years ago but Discord still remembered being captured by ponies when he was a child and didn't speak their language, mistaken for a non-speaking animal, and caged and treated like a ferocious beast rather than the terrified little colt that he'd been. If this one had had the same background... then this Celestia was definitely actively in on this, because there was no way this was a coincidence and there was no way any being but Celestia would know his past.

Once they were back in Fluttercruel's house, Fluttercruel unbuckled the leash from his collar. "Put the shields up around the house?" she said, in the same quiet, uncertain, questioning tone that the real Fluttershy, his Fluttershy, would have used, except that the magical shields in question were intended to keep anypony from hearing, seeing or walking in on the things Fluttercruel tended to do to Discord, and the incongruence between the gentle tone of the order and the purpose of it was a knife in Discord's heart. Funny. He was normally a big fan of incongruence.

"Now lay down, wings flat," Fluttercruel said. "We're going to treat those injuries, okay? After what Twilight put you through last night, you should have been a little bit more obedient for Applejack; I let you heal yourself last night, but I can't give that to you again so soon. You should have known."

He had known. It hadn't changed the fact that he couldn't do the job. He'd packed the baskets full of apples, but Applejack had demanded he do it _evenly_, except that didn't even mean make it the same number of apples, it meant make it come up to the same level and there had been no way. Discord couldn't even see unevenness; the baskets had actually looked entirely too even and regular to him, so he had thought he must have done it right. He didn't bother to point this out. It wouldn't help him any, and if Fluttercruel decided it was backtalk, it could hurt him quite a lot.

Last night... well, last night had been awful, as every time he was sent to Twilight was, but he'd accomplished the goal he'd been working toward. For what felt like it had been nearly forever, Discord had been writing a letter, using his own blood and the dirt of his basement prison for ink and his talon for a quill (except on the days when it was hurt too badly to move it, when he'd use one of the digits of his paw), on paper he used the remnants of his magic to make out of wood shavings and his own torn skin. Realistically he thought it was about three weeks, almost half of the two months he'd been here; he was forced to see Twilight two days a week, like clockwork, and he'd been to see her six times during the time he was writing the letter. He'd poured out the entire history of how he'd gotten here and everything that had happened to him since in a desperate and lengthy plea for his own Twilight Sparkle to come save him. The whole time he'd been writing it, he'd been more than halfway convinced it wasn't going to help, that his Fluttershy might care for him and call him a friend but his Twilight still despised him... but he had no choice. It was the only hope he had. He had saved a tiny bit of magic to cast onto Spike so that the letter would go to Spike's cognate in Discord's own universe, and he'd managed to persuade Spike to send it last night, after Twilight's experiments were done for the evening.

Spike had thought Discord was asking him to send the letter to Celestia. It had been so, so hard not to tell the little dragon the truth. Discord couldn't actively lie at all; the spell simply wouldn't let him form words that weren't true. He could omit information, but at a price, a price he'd paid last night when he'd vomited so much and so hard that in the end nothing had been coming up but thin bile and blood. But he'd done it. Spike had jumped to the conclusion that Discord was sending the letter to Celestia because he had some advice for the princess on how to return the Element Bearers to their prior selves, and Discord had carefully managed to never address that conclusion for yay or nay, focusing on telling Spike why somepony had to fix the Elements and managing to never mention the fact that that had no connection to his letter.

The omission of facts had led to acute nausea and finally vomiting when it had overwhelmed him, and he'd had a very close call when Twilight had guessed that Discord throwing up meant Discord had been close-to-lying, and had said so in front of Fluttercruel, and the sadistic glee in the pegasus' voice when she'd pronounced that Discord needed a special punishment for that... he'd wanted to die. He'd been so exhausted and he'd hurt so badly from Twilight's experiments and he'd just drained every last dram of Chaos magic in his body and then every last bit of food or water in his stomach, and the thought of what Fluttercruel would do to him was just unendurable. But Spike had saved him, lying for him, claiming that Discord had said nothing at all... because Spike had believed him when Discord had confessed to him that this wasn't his universe, that the Discord who'd destroyed the Elements by fusing them with their opposites and in turn had been destroyed by Spike with a sledgehammer was still dead, just as Spike had left him, and Discord himself was from an alternate universe and innocent of that particular crime.

He didn't expect anything further from Spike. He hadn't, in fact, expected quite as much as he got. The little dragon was entirely under Twilight Sparkle's control, not through a spell but through the bonds of love and friendship, even though Discord would have thought those wouldn't work anymore because of how much Twilight had changed. But then, what did he know about it? He was no expert on friendship. And if a friend acting completely unlike the pony they'd been before made the bonds of love and friendship stop working entirely, then Fluttercruel's tortures wouldn't be nearly so hard for Discord to deal with.

This wasn't his first encounter with the concept, he supposed. He'd done things for Celestia long after she'd turned on him, after all.

But he was disharmony. He'd been closer to his enemies than to the friends he didn't actually have for centuries. He'd never held it against a pony that they were trying to kill him or turn him to stone; he'd felt great amused affection for many a pony who'd hated him and treated him with defiance and anger. To be honest, he hadn't really stopped loving Celestia until some centuries of being imprisoned in stone had gone by, even though long prior to that she'd abandoned him and then turned on him and fought him for years. Discord had always assumed that that came with the territory of being the spirit of disharmony, since it was much, much easier for him to break apart pony friendships than it was for the enemies he loved having to get him to genuinely hate them. Why would a being who was used to having genuine friends be willing to put up with them when they turned cold and cruel? Discord had caused friendships to break up over _much_ less than how new Twilight was treating Spike.

It didn't matter. The letter was sent. It would probably come to nothing and he didn't quite dare hope it would actually lead to a rescue... but now he'd done everything it was in his power to do to save himself. All he could do now was endure without breaking for as long as he possibly could.

Which... might not be all that long, anymore. Fluttercruel had been putting more salve and bandages on him, and then had had him lie on his back, once the injuries on his back were dressed and slathered in painkilling ointments, so she could get at the underside of the damaged wing, where she'd stitched it and dressed it so it almost didn't hurt. And now she was nuzzling him, nose against his side, the soft fur of her foreleg and the tough skin-covered flexible cartilage of her hoof stroking over the fur of his chest and belly, down to where the fur grew through dragon scales and hid the transition between his upper and lower body. Discord shuddered. This wouldn't be nearly as horrible if it didn't feel good. He'd considered his Fluttershy a friend, nothing more, but if she'd wanted him as hungrily, desired him as strongly, as Fluttercruel did, he would have responded; what Discord found most attractive in a potential sexual partner was them finding _him_ attractive. Given how few ponies did, that particular preference had probably saved him a lot of heartache over the years. If Fluttercruel was the pony she looked and sounded exactly like, her caresses and nuzzles would feel wonderful.

But she wasn't.

"Applejack says you were a good colt today," Fluttercruel said sweetly, teasingly. "She said you messed up your job but you were sorry about it, that you took responsibility for your mistakes and regretted them. I like to hear that." She flapped her wings slightly and repositioned herself, nuzzling his neck now. This time the shudders that went through Discord were not of horror. "You're really starting to learn. I think you're well on your way to reforming, don't you?"

Discord closed his eyes. She had to use _that_ word, the word his Fluttershy had used. "I'm trying," he said softly, because it was true enough; he was trying to obey, to succeed at the tasks he was given, because he didn't want to be punished. He didn't _want_ to be obedient, but he didn't want to be tortured either, and most of the time that took precedence nowadays.

"You make me so happy when you're obedient," Fluttercruel said, sighing happily, sounding just exactly like his Fluttershy did when she was pleased with him and no, he was not going to break down in front of her, he was not going to cry, and he wasn't going to pretend she was really Fluttershy either. He would keep his eyes closed so he didn't have to watch, let her do what she wanted, and endure. This couldn't be breaking his heart, Celestia had done that centuries ago and now he didn't have one. He could take this. He had to.

"Will you make me happy, Discord?" He felt her shift on top of his neck, her legs on either side of his head, pinning him. "Open your eyes." Discord obeyed, looking up into those deep blue pools that looked just like his Fluttershy's eyes. "Will you make me happy?"

"I'll do whatever you say," he said dully, because that was true too; he didn't have a choice.

"Oh, don't look so sad about it. You know you'll like it." She planted a kiss on his nose, and then slid her body forward. "Make me happy, sweetie. You know what I like."

Yes. He did. He was grateful that the beating Applejack had given him seemed to be all the buildup she needed and she wasn't going to have to hurt him herself first. He was also grateful that he had the most amazingly flexible, lengthy and useful tongue of any creature on Equestria, because it made this a lot easier. She didn't have to sit directly _on_ him, just stand over him, shuddering with excitement and whimpering in a tiny quiet voice that sounded much too much like his Fluttershy as he used his flexible neck and even more flexible tongue all over her underbelly, finally coming to where she wanted his attention the most and giving her what she wanted.

She was a toy. She was an object for him to manipulate, just like all ponies had been for centuries, a thing for him to do things to and get a reaction. She wasn't a thinking, feeling being that he actually cared about. He was pushing buttons – almost literally in this case – to achieve an effect, just as he'd done thousands of times to thousands of ponies that he'd tormented and terrorized. The only difference was, he'd done chaotic, non-sexual things to toy with their emotional states for his own amusement, in the past, and here, he was performing semi-predictable, sexual activities to toy with Fluttercruel's state of arousal for _her_ amusement, at her orders. But it was the same thing. He told himself that.

She was not Fluttershy. He didn't care about her. When she moaned, and made her tiny little cries, and finally called his name as her hips bucked against his tongue, and she sounded exactly like his Fluttershy while she was doing it, exactly like he imagined she would anyway since he'd never taken the real thing to bed and had never expected to... that didn't mean anything at all. She was just an object he was manipulating. That was all.

He was pretty sure he used to be better at lying to himself.

"Oh, you're wonderful, sweetie," she sighed, snuggling against him. "You, uh, your, uh..." She lifted her head, her face red with embarrassment, blushing through her fur. "Your tongue was just made to please mares," she blurted out quickly and then buried her red face in his fur. Embarrassed by her own risque talk, despite what she did to him on a regular basis. Just like he suspected the real Fluttershy would be, if she took it into her head to try to talk dirty.

He was not going to cry. He was the God of Chaos for the sake of all that mattered. He had terrified ponydom for nearly a millennium. He was not going to cry because his torturer sounded just as embarrassed and shyly excited about her not-even-that-lewd praise of his bedroom techniques as his real best friend might have if he'd been with her by mutual consent and this wasn't rape and she wasn't holding him prisoner and torturing him on a regular basis and any of this had been real. Not going to cry.

She was nuzzling him again. _All and any gods that were or are or will ever be... please make this stop. Please. No more._ "Such a good colt," she said. "You deserve a reward, sweetie."

"You don't need to," he said hoarsely. "All I was trying to do was make you happy. I don't want anything for myself." Except peace and quiet and rest. Well, or impossible things, like full control of his powers back, or his former nemeses charging out of the portal he'd left by the Everfree to come to his rescue, or to suddenly have a heart attack and die.

"Oh, but you were so good," Fluttercruel said. "You _deserve_ a reward."

His voice broke. "If it's a reward then why am I not allowed to say no?" he asked, breathing raggedly, trying not to crack.

Immediately he was afraid after he'd said it, and regretting the fact that it was very, very hard for him to keep his impulses under control even when the consequences of failure could be so dire. But she just giggled. "Silly! You're not allowed to say no to anything. That's why it's _obedience_ training."

_That's why it's rape_, he thought, but managed not to say it. The last time he had called her ministrations rape, she had flown into a rage and told him that if he thought her being gentle and loving was rape maybe he needed a reminder of what rape was really like and that was _quite_ enough of remembering that, thank you very much.

"Besides, you know you'll like it," she said. "You know you enjoy it when I'm _nice_ to you." The last was almost a purr, but there was a cold edge to it.

Discord froze, his whole body tensing. _No. No no no no. Please no._ The last time she had felt the need to point out the difference between the behavior that was almost like the old Fluttershy and the behavior his counterpart had instilled in her, it had resulted in a lengthy demonstration of why he should prefer her being nice and why he should regret the day he had ever made her cruel. He remembered screaming that he was sorry, over and over again - which he was, not in the sense of guilt, because he hadn't been the one that did it, but in the sense of regret, because once upon a time she had been a Fluttershy just like his Fluttershy and it was _his_ cognate, _his_ alter ego that had changed her and he was so very sorry that had happened to her and not even just because of what she was doing to him... although admittedly it was mostly because of what she was doing to him. It hadn't mattered. Nothing he'd done had mattered. It had all been about Fluttercruel wanting to hurt him, and it hadn't ended until she'd been satisfied, long long past the point where Discord had stopped being able to beg or scream because his throat was too raw and he'd been reduced to weak, hopeless sobbing interspersed with moments of blacking out entirely.

Fluttercruel hated what she was even as she reveled in it, and frequently, she took her mixed feelings out on him, punishing him for giving her these horrible new urges and satisfying those urges at the same time.

"Yes," he said hastily. "I- I definitely prefer it when you're nice." He hated it. But he hated it less than when she was cruel, so he could honestly say he preferred it. Funny. He remembered telling Fluttershy it was time to be cruel, and placing a mind control spell on her. But the cruel Fluttershy _he'd_ created was simply a hilariously mean jerk. She wouldn't have been capable of this exquisitely evil combination of kindness and cruelty that was so, so much more destructive than straight-up cruelty ever could have been. He'd have to remember that, if he ever needed it in the future. Well, except that he didn't promote cruelty in ponies anymore, not since the real Fluttershy had become his friend. Which made it so unfair that this was happening to him _now._

"Then stop telling me you want to say no," Fluttercruel said. "You wouldn't want to make me unhappy, would you?"

"No, of course not!" Because her being unhappy had a direct correlation with how much pain she'd inflict on him.

She kissed him. "I think you should be quiet now? Unless you want me to put the muzzle on you. We could do that if you'd like it that way."

"I'll be quiet," he said desperately. "Please, I—" She would not be moved by his terror of being completely unable to open his mouth. Quickly he thought of something, and then quickly rephrased it in his head so the whole sentence was technically true. "You can't kiss me when you muzzle me."

"Oh, you like it when I kiss you?" She did it again, and this time he tangled his tongue with hers, lifting his head and pressing his lips hard against her lips, feigning passion, so she wouldn't force him to actually answer that question, because she wouldn't like the answer he'd be forced to give. He wanted to put his arms around her to complete the pretense, but he wasn't allowed to touch her without permission.

"Mm, you do like that, don't you," Fluttercruel said. She was breathing hard. "Oh, I know what reward to give such a sweet little colt."

She kissed and nuzzled her way down his body. He was shaking, arousal that he didn't want but couldn't afford to try to fight off uncoiling inside him, terror of what would happen if this didn't and utter despair of what would happen if this did. When she reached his lower body, he was still sheathed, too frightened and miserable for the unwanted pleasure of her caresses to do its job. "Discord, sweetie, get hard for me," Fluttercruel said, face bright red again. "There's a good colt."

That was an order. He didn't have to try to force his body to respond or to not respond; it was out of his paws now entirely, the obedience spell taking over his autonomic nervous system. He felt his body respond to her order, the sheath being pushed out of the way and the growing organ within it pressing outward, but he felt almost completely detached from it. It didn't feel good, or bad for that matter, it was just a fairly meaningless physical change, like stretching his tail would be. That was actually a relief, one of the few times he appreciated the obedience spell.

Once she had enough of him exposed that she could accomplish her goals, he started feeling things again. Discord moved his head restlessly, looking everywhere except down at his captor and what she was doing to him. This wasn't going to end until he responded the way she wanted, so he didn't try to stop himself from feeling pleasure – not that that would have been particularly easy anyway, Discord had never been nearly as good at not feeling what he felt as he had been at not reacting the way anypony else would to those feelings. Instead, he pulled away in his mind, abandoning the place and time where things were happening to him that he didn't want. The world was dissolving into a cacophony of meaningless patterns upon patterns layered on top of each other where nothing had significance and nothing was important except snapping or reshaping as many of the patterns as he could; but he didn't have the power to do that right now, so the compulsions that usually overtook him when this happened felt more like deeply desired wishes than anything he absolutely _had_ to do. Good enough.

Someplace there was a creature moaning in pleasure as a yellow pegasus sucked and licked and nibbled and finally climbed up on him and rode him, but that was meaningless too because it was all noise, all stupid patterns and he could see the places they would break if he could just reach out and do it and that was what was important here, not the thing from an extinct race writhing under the winged pony but the _patterns_ and how breakable they were. Why was up up? Why wasn't it down? Why wasn't it purple? What if gravity and gravy were the same thing? What if field trips were avocados? What if skies could ride ponies? What if the secret of the universe was a nectarine? What if you could surf rugs? What if you could surf rugs on the ceiling? What if evil rabbits were rugs and you were surfing them on the ceiling? What if the draconequus on the floor had an orgasm and it didn't matter because nothing mattered because all there was, was patterns and nothing meant anything?

He wanted to laugh at how silly it all was but some survival instinct kept him grounded just enough to know to keep quiet. Things started to feel real again. The pony lying on top of him, panting. The hard wooden floor under his back. Aches and occasional shooting pains from the injuries all over his back and wings. The puddle of moisture on the insides of his hips and the exposed underside of his tail, slowly oozing down the sides of his tail and thighs to the floor.

"Oh, sweetie," Fluttershy was saying. She was on top of him, no longer engulfing him but legs still straddling him, the point of heat and moisture between her legs still pressed against his body, and she was blushing. No, not Fluttershy. Fluttercruel. There was a difference. It was important. He had to remember. "I love to make you happy. I wish you were obedient and good all the time, then I would never need to be mean to you."

He wished so profoundly that any of that were true. As reality and memory came back, he realized the danger he was in right now. Fluttercruel seemed to genuinely believe, or at least was fooling herself into believing, that she'd really rewarded him. And if he disabused her of that belief, he could expect nothing but pain. But with the honesty spell, if she actually _asked_ him if he'd enjoyed it, there was no way he could give her a safe answer. Certainly he couldn't risk being pushed into telling her that he'd taken refuge in his chaos perceptions and the state of near-madness they brought so that he wouldn't have to be consciously aware of what she was doing to him. Discord felt incredibly vulnerable, on his back with belly and neck exposed and genitals not fully resheathed yet, with the tiny pony who had near-absolute power over him still on top of him, pinning him to the floor. Quickly, trying not to think about what he was doing, he whispered, "Can I thank you? Please, Fluttershy?"

Her voice grew suddenly hard. "Is that what you call me?"

"Please, mistress." He hated that. He hated it so much. He had never called anypony master or mistress. Well, okay, he'd called Starswirl master for about a month and a half before he'd decided to call him "teach" instead, because Discord had always considered it very important to make absolutely sure that everypony knew that he didn't think any of them were better than him. Starswirl had not been pleased, but the opportunity to train such a powerful student came along once in a lifetime, so he hadn't tried to pawn Discord off on a less knowledgeable teacher who'd put up with the lack of respect better.

"I'm not completely sure I'm hearing enough respect..."

"Please, mistress Fluttershy, can I thank you? Can I please you for what you've done for me?"

Fluttercruel giggled, a huge happy and embarrassed grin on her face. She was still aroused. He'd guessed right. He'd been too out of it to tell at the time but she hadn't come during intercourse; she'd gotten herself riled up and now she'd want more, and if he was proactive, and appeared to be submissive and genuinely desiring to please her, then she probably wouldn't hurt him to excite herself enough for a second one. He didn't _want_ to do this, but if he did it, she wouldn't ask him whether he'd enjoyed being raped because his mouth would be otherwise occupied, and she wouldn't hurt him to prove her power over him because the fact that he appeared to be submitting willingly would be proof enough, and maybe he could fool her into thinking that he actually cared about her even slightly.

She fluttered up and forward, landed on his upper body, and snuggled against his neck. "Oh, you animal," she said, still giggling, though the term took on an entirely uglier meaning when you considered she was a xenophilic rapist who used to prey on non-sentients until she got hold of him instead. "Yes, you can thank me. But let's go to bed first, this floor isn't very comfortable, is it?"

It certainly wasn't. His injuries burned, not as badly as if there was no painkilling salve at all but much worse than they'd felt before she'd made him have sex with her on his back on the floor. He got up, aching, wishing he could go all the way up to two legs, but she never let him do that anymore. How a quadruped had figured out that being forced to go four-legged would humiliate an optional biped, he didn't know. Maybe she'd just figured out that she never wanted him to have his natural height advantage; his limbs were proportionately much shorter than pony limbs, so being four-legged left his torso at slightly shorter than average stallion height, and having a really long body didn't seem to intimidate ponies nearly as much as having a really tall body did. His neck was still longer than any pony's could possibly be, but he'd learned to keep his head more or less lowered to the same level as his torso or bent to be only slightly higher, because every so often Fluttercruel would take his attempts to keep his head raised as a symbol of defiance or arrogance, and what came after that was never anything he wanted to have to endure.

They walked to the bed. "Now, I don't want you bleeding on my sheets, so I'm going to let you heal a little bit, ok? I want you to scab the wounds over so they aren't bleeding anymore, but they should still hurt. That was an important lesson Applejack had for you today, and if we don't let it take some time to sink in she might have to do it again, and I know you wouldn't like that, right?"

He nodded as he obeyed. The flow of his magic felt wonderful, like water to a being dying of thirst, and the relief of the acute burning pain was lovely... but it was all too brief. He wasn't allowed to heal all the way, he wasn't allowed to continue to command his magic.

Discord cried out in pain as Fluttercruel suddenly punched a hoof into his injured wing. "What was that for?" he gasped, forgetting that he wasn't supposed to question.

"Just checking to see if you did it the way I told you to," Fluttercruel said. "And you did. Good colt. I'm so proud of you. Why don't you lay down on the nice soft bed?" He started to climb up into it and curl himself, as if he was going to go to sleep. "No, no, on your back, remember? You wanted to thank me." She giggled.

Right. He lay down on his back again, and then propped himself on his side with his talon. "Can I touch you... mistress?" Oh how he hated that word.

"You want to touch me?"

No. No, he didn't. He wanted to run away screaming. Instead he offered her his paw. "Most mares really enjoy it when I stroke them with this," he said. "They say it's very soft."

Fluttercruel's eyes narrowed. "I don't want to hear about other mares right now, Discord."

He cringed. "I—I'm sorry. I didn't mean – I just wanted to say I think you'd enjoy it if you let me touch you..."

Her dark expression softened, became a tender smile. "Oh, okay. Since you want to." She lay next to him, on her back, wiggling, offering herself. "Go on, Discord. Thank me if you want to."

This was almost bearable. He was _sort_ of in control here; he'd volunteered rather than being ordered, he was being allowed to use his paw and to move his body rather than being pinned under her. The spells kept him from doing anything that might possibly cause her harm, but if he licked and stroked her to orgasm multiple times until she fell asleep from exhaustion before putting him back in his cell, that wasn't harmful at all. She'd love that. And he'd love to be able to sleep in a bed for once, in a moonlit room that would fill with sunlight in the morning, even if it meant sleeping next to his tormentor. Oh, what if he could get up once she was asleep and raid her _pantry_? What if he could have a _peanut butter and jelly sandwich?_ Or two? She'd surely catch him if he stole food that was easy to count, like apples, but two slices of bread from a whole load and enough peanut butter and jelly from the jars to slather on the bread wouldn't be missed, and if he cleaned up any mess he made she'd never know.

What if he could use a bathroom instead of pissing in a corner and having to smell it until she allowed him to use his magic to clean it up? What if he could drink as much water as he wanted? The possibilities danced before him. All he had to do was please Fluttercruel until she passed out. Given how exhausted _he_ was, that wasn't the most pleasant of prospects, but the possible reward if he pulled it off gave him energy.

Discord had been very, very experienced before he'd spent a thousand years in stone. Xenophiles were a minority among ponies, but when you were the most famous, powerful and strange-looking creature in Equestria, there was no need to go looking for xenophilic partners; they'd found him. After Discord had taken over Equestria he had never had any shortage of ponies, and other species, seeking him out. This did mean he hadn't had opportunities to get back into practice since being un-statued, either after breaking free on his own or after being freed at Celestia's command – he found partnered sex pointless if it wasn't with someone who wanted him badly enough to approach him with an offer, and he'd had much higher priorities than sex since getting free - but sex was one of those things you just didn't forget how to do even if you spent a thousand years as a statue. And it had always been a point of pride for him that his ability to manipulate ponies into paroxysms of ecstasy was as well honed as his ability to manipulate them into acts of greed, malevolence or despair. Admittedly it'd been easier to do it with his powers, but he'd learned to use his body to please a lover before he'd learned fine control of chaos. That wasn't something he'd forgotten, either.

Back in the old days, many of the ponies who'd come to him had been more than a little frightened of or shocked by their own desires. And he'd enjoyed that, truly he had, he liked straightforward honest lust but he also liked messing with pony heads. When they'd been trembling with desire for him and simultaneously afraid of him and sickened by their own belief in how wrong their desires were, it had been so delightful to pleasantly torment them into boneless puddles of pleasure (not literally; he _could_ have done it literally but that didn't actually sound like any fun at all) without taking anything for himself, just to hit their expectations upside the head and knock them over, because they'd thought they were giving themselves to a monster out of sick, twisted, perverse desires and ended up with a lover who really, really enjoyed making them love every moment of it. Oh, and then they felt so guilty over having seen him as a monster and how selfish they'd been giving nothing back to him, and _then_ they'd fallen all over themselves to please him and that had been marvelous too. (And then the part where he'd declared that he was bored with them now and had tossed them out on their rumps as soon as they'd started the sappy talk had also been tons of fun but that made him feel more than a little guilty now.)

So he knew exactly what he was doing. And by the time he was done with it, Fluttershy (no, no, Fluttercruel, remember it) was practically purring with delight in the afterglow of multiple orgasms. She snuggled up next to him and fell asleep right there on the bed, just as he'd planned, leaving him totally unsupervised and unchained.

He could _escape_.

The thought struck him like a thunderbolt. He'd been thinking so small. Go steal snacks. Go pee in a bathroom. The _door_ wasn't locked. Neither were the windows, and while jumping out of a window with no magic and his wings in this condition wouldn't be pleasant, he was tall enough that the distance to the ground was not much more than his full height standing. Or, a downstairs window would work too. The portal to his home dimension was near the Everfree, and maybe, maybe he could summon up enough magic to open it, or at least maybe he could hide in the Everfree until he managed to build up enough magic to open it.

He could be _free_. Without waiting for rescue, without having to die. He could be free.

Discord started to sit up, at which point he realized that Fluttercruel was sleeping on his bad wing.

No. _No_. He wasn't going to let something like this stop him. Not when he could be free. He pulled, gritting his teeth against the pain. Fluttercruel didn't budge, and his wing remained stuck.

Without his magic, Discord's wings weren't very strong, almost vestigial. He'd spent a few years in his childhood with them clipped together more or less perpetually, and they hadn't really naturally grown with the rest of his body since. It wasn't an issue he'd ever bothered to try to permanently fix, since most of his magic was deliberately impermanent anyway and because when he actually needed powerful working wings he could always grow them out, and he rarely needed powerful wings because his magic could negate gravity anytime he wanted. So now that he didn't have his magic to either negate gravity or expand his wings, it was very difficult for him to fly and it turned out it was _incredibly_ difficult for him to pull the wing out from underneath a little yellow pegasus without disturbing her sleep. Maybe he'd have been able to do better if the wing weren't injured, but Fluttercruel hadn't let him completely heal it.

He lay on the bed, panting with effort. He couldn't be kept from escaping, from _freedom_, by such a stupid thing. Pain didn't mean anything, couldn't mean anything. He couldn't allow it. He _had_ to get his wing loose.

The spells on him wouldn't allow him to touch Fluttercruel without her permission. He couldn't simply pick her up and lift her off the wing, even though his arms were strong enough to do so and he could do it gently, without disturbing her, because he wasn't allowed to touch her. The thought occurred to him that she _had_ given him permission to touch her, that she'd never technically rescinded that permission, but when he tried, the loyalty spell – really a spell intended to prevent him from harming his captors, but Twilight had insisted on calling it a loyalty spell – caught him and froze him, because his intent wasn't for his captor's benefit. He didn't intend to _harm_ her, just get free – by now he didn't even fantasize about vengeance, he just wanted to escape and never see these twisted parodies of the ponies he knew again – but he could touch Fluttercruel when she ordered him to or during sex, with her permission, because it was for her benefit or at her command. He wasn't allowed to touch any of them for reasons that benefited _him_.

Discord pulled again. No good. The wing wasn't even budging. At this point, like an animal in a trap he was seriously considering ripping the wing off with his talon. He could wrap his tail around the bone, break it, then use his talon to rip the skin and muscle free so he could pull his wing off entirely. Once he was home and free of these spells he could regrow the wing.

Except that Discord knew exactly how much it hurt to be dismembered. Pinkie Pie hadn't taken his wings because she'd been using them, along with his shoulders, to pin him to the wall, using a handful of sharp spikes through them, like pins through a butterfly. But he couldn't imagine that ripping off his wing would hurt _less_ than having his arm sawed off. He also remembered fainting from blood loss and pain repeatedly, and only the obedience spell and Pinkie's repeated orders to wake up and pay attention because it was no fun if he was going to sleep through it had kept him conscious. Even if he could bring himself to rip off his own wing, if he then blacked out from pain and shock he still wouldn't get away. And it would be obvious to Fluttercruel what he'd been trying to do, and then losing his wing would probably be the _least_ painful thing he suffered.

He was stuck. He had a perfect chance to escape and he was going to lose it because he hadn't been careful to prevent Fluttercruel from falling asleep on top of his wing and he was never going to have a chance like this again and he was never going to be free—

Raw panic hit, the horror and claustrophobia of being trapped immobile in stone for a thousand years and now two months of this crashed over him, and he lost all sense of reason, of control. He flung himself away from Fluttercruel wildly, desperately, over and over, tail curled around a bedpost and pulling with all his strength, arms flailing out to try to grab the other bedpost so he could increase his leverage, throwing and pulling and throwing and pulling until finally, finally it felt like the wing was starting to budge and he threw all his strength into folding it back, pulling it free, knocking the pegasus loose and he fell, free at last, tumbling off the bed onto his face but it didn't matter because he could get up and get free and—

"What do you think you're doing?"

No. No no no.

She hadn't given him an order yet. Discord ran on all fours for the window, desperately.

"STOP!"

Five seconds. He had five seconds after an order. He could keep running, he could throw himself through the window. But then the spell would force him to stop. He'd be out of the house, down on the ground, but he wouldn't be able to move... and Fluttercruel would know he had just tried to escape. He couldn't do it. It wasn't going to succeed, and if it wasn't going to succeed, he couldn't afford to give away that he'd tried. Tears welled up in Discord's eyes as he brought himself to a halt before the spell forced him to. He'd been so close. So close.

"So." Fluttercruel's voice was cold and vicious. "Exactly what were you trying to do?"

"I'm sorry," Discord whimpered, which was true, he was very, very sorry that she'd woken up and stopped him. "You were sleeping on my wing, it was hurting me, I'm sorry..."

"You yanked yourself out from under me and _knocked me off the bed_ just because your _wing_ hurt?" Fluttercruel shouted.

That was not a question he dared answer, because of course the wing hurting, while true, hadn't actually been his motivation at all. Instead Discord lowered his head to the floor, trying not to sob. "I'm sorry, mistress, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you or disturb you, I'm so sorry..."

"I bandage you up. I give you a _reward_. I let you sleep in a _bed_, I even let you heal yourself most of the way. And _THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY ME?"_ The last was a psychotic shriek. Discord curled his tail around his legs, trembling, wings and limbs pulled in as close to his body as he could, as if there was any way he could protect any part of himself once Fluttercruel started.

The thought occurred to him that she hadn't told him not to start running again. "Stop" was a discrete activity; now that he had stopped, he had satisfied the requirements of the spell. Maybe she would turn away for a moment and he could run again. If he could get through the window before she told him to stop again...

"Oh, don't you dare even think about running," Fluttercruel snarled, and destroyed that hope. "You think I didn't see you trying to run away from me before I told you to stop? You had better stay _right there_ and take your punishment, mister."

And now there was no way out. He couldn't run. "I'm sorry, please, I'm sorry..." In mid-plea his voice broke and he started crying with fear (and grief at the lost opportunity, he'd been so close, so _close_, but he couldn't let Fluttercruel know that, whereas he absolutely needed her to know how terrified he was because if she thought he wasn't scared enough she'd make it much worse).

"Oh, you will be sorry," Fluttercruel said. "You'll be very, very sorry. I was kind to you tonight, but that was a mistake, wasn't it! _You're_ the one who told me it was time to be cruel; I should remember that that's the only thing you respect!"

"Please, please, mistress Fluttershy, please don't punish me, please, it was an accident, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I never meant to wake you, I'm sorry..."

"Muzzle yourself. With the gag bit," Fluttercruel ordered.

Discord's eyes went wide. "No, please, I'll be quiet, I'll—" And then he couldn't speak anymore as his own magic betrayed him, as the obedience spell forced him to materialize a buckled muzzle around his snout, with a bit in his mouth keeping him from biting down all the way and a cylindrical rubber gag attached to the bit, unpleasantly phallic, pinning his tongue in place and filling his mouth. He choked, gagging, for a moment, before he managed to shift his jaw and tongue in a way that accommodated the thing he'd been forced to put in his mouth. Discord breathed heavily through his nostrils, panting, wild with terror and now unable to get quite enough air to satisfy lungs that wanted to hyperventilate.

"And not only did you wake me up, not only did you try to run away from me when you first woke me up... _now_ you just tried to resist your orders. That's _bad_, Discord. That's very, very bad. That's even worse than waking me up." He whined with fear. There was no escaping this, whatever it was going to be. He couldn't even beg with the gag in.

Fluttercruel walked around in front of him. "Now." Her voice was cold. "What do I have to punish such a naughty little colt with? Applejack gave you a whipping today and it doesn't seem like it taught you anything, did it? Maybe we need something... special."

_Stop crying. Stop crying. She isn't even doing it yet, you look like such a pathetic coward, can't you save the waterworks until she actually starts the punishment? Stop crying!_

His angry admonishments to himself didn't do him any good. He was still sobbing with terror, the sound muffled by the gag and the muzzle pinning his mouth closed but in his own ears it was louder than anything. If he'd had time to brace himself, if he'd known she would wake up or that he would be punished, he could have held the tears back, but he'd been so, so close to being free and now he was going to be tortured again and he just couldn't take the sudden snap from one extreme to the other. Which admittedly would have its funny side, that he of all beings would be breaking down in terror because of events he could have handled better if they'd been _predictable_, except that right now nothing was funny.

"Twilight gave me a present last night," Fluttercruel said. "When I came to pick you up."

After he'd gotten Spike to send that letter. Please, let the letter have gone through. Please let Twilight Sparkle have compassion for him and come and save him from this. He had no idea who he was asking for these things, he didn't believe that any of the gods higher than him actually paid attention to such pleas, and why would they? He certainly didn't.

"She gave me a special new whip. Very special."

Discord's mind fixated on his world's Twilight. Princess Twilight, the alicorn, different from this world's Twilight in every respect imaginable. Unlike all the others, they didn't even look that much alike. He could picture his Twilight in his mind without any interference from images of his tormentor because the Twilight of this universe had no wings. _Help me, Twilight, please, please, help me... _Not that she could possibly come in time to save him from what was about to happen right now. Nothing would save him from that.

"She said it's a diamond that's been spun into a single thread, with magic. She said it's the sharpest, strongest wire magic can produce. You don't seem to be responding to the rope with the diamonds in it so well anymore, but let's see what you think of a whip that _is_ a diamond."

Discord went ice cold. He felt like his heart had just stopped. And then he forced himself to breathe, forced the terror down, as numb resignation washed over him. If Twilight had turned a diamond into a thread, then the whip Fluttercruel was picking up, mouth on its handle, was monofilament carbon. With his magic, Discord would easily have been able to deflect or heal from such a weapon; monofilament carbon didn't have _magical_ properties per se. But it had physical properties. Namely that it could cut through flesh like a knife through jello. And without command of his powers, Discord was as much flesh as any other creature.

This was how he died, he thought, hopelessness stilling his limbs and quieting his sobs. He couldn't speak to warn Fluttercruel that this weapon would slice right through him, that the whip she was about to wield would literally cut him in half. Well. It was ironic after he'd just managed to send the message to call for help, and bitter after he'd just been thinking he might be able to get free _without_ dying, but the truth was, it would be a quick death and then he would be free. Not painless – he was sure being sliced into pieces was actually going to hurt a great deal – but quick.

He was resigned, even accepting. A quick death was actually a much more merciful fate than what he'd been expecting from Fluttercruel's rage. And hilarious, really, she didn't know she was about to kill him and then wouldn't she be so upset that she'd broken her toy? Discord was quiet now, eyes closed, waiting for his end. His body wasn't quite as resigned and accepting as his mind was; he trembled, he was still hyperventilating, his heart was still thundering in his chest, his wings and his back muscles cringed as if they could possibly curl themselves away from the oncoming whip and save him. But he couldn't control these physical reactions. In his mind, he had gone all the way through surrender and despair and out the other side, almost to a fragile sense of peace. Maybe at least he could die with dignity, if he couldn't have anything else.

It was actually pathetically funny when you thought about it. She didn't even know he'd been trying to escape. She was about to kill him by accident for knocking her out of bed when he was trying to get his wing free. What a totally ridiculous reason to die. Fitting, really. He should have known his death would come for an enormously stupid reason.

He'd died before, but with his magic, so he'd been powerful enough to bring himself back. With his magic so limited, he knew this would be the last death, the end he wouldn't return from.

He wondered if that meant he would finally get to see his mother again. He'd never found her before when he'd walked in the land of the dead, but he'd never spent much time being dead so he couldn't know for sure.

He wondered if his Fluttershy would actually miss him when he was gone.

He was pretty sure Celestia wouldn't.

And then the whip came down.

It didn't feel like a whip. It felt like a sword, slicing through his back. Discord screamed through the gag, unable to stop himself from reacting to the pain. He'd wanted so much to have some dignity when he died. Well, looked like that wasn't going to happen any more than a rescue would.

It came down again, opening another line of fire across his back, and then again, and wait, what? Why wasn't he dead? The wire should have sliced through him and cut him in half. Was it so fine that it was simply going through his cells, not even splitting him apart? He twisted his body, putting his muscles under torque so that if a force sliced through them, gravity would pull the two halves apart. Another razor blow, and he still didn't fall apart. It wasn't killing him.

Discord craned his head back to see the weapon, just in time to watch it slice through his injured wing. He cried out in agony. The membrane and the lower bone had been sliced through entirely, and now a third of the wing was dangling off the thicker upper bone like a piece of cloth dangling from a rack. So much blood. He could see his own spine through the new wounds on his back. The wire was braided, not a single strand.

Hilarious. Discord started to laugh hysterically through his screams. Each individual wire was sharp enough to slice through bone as if it were butter, but braid several of them together and they interfered with each other, canceling each other out in a perfect expression of disharmony so that now the thing was only sharp enough to cut through skin and muscle and the light wing bones. Maybe if someone stronger than Fluttercruel was wielding it, it would kill him, but in her hooves it was only going to maim him. He sobbed, and screamed, and laughed brokenly through the gag, because disharmony was sparing his life at a moment when he really, really wanted it not to, which was pretty much par for the course with disharmony and he probably should have seen this coming, but oh please this hurt so much and his bat wing was hanging from the bone in literal ribbons and now she had started in on his pegasus wing and if he couldn't die at least he could black out, couldn't he? Why hadn't he passed out by now?

A piece of his bat wing fell to the floor, the damaged upper bone finally snapping under the whip. He couldn't see the patterns anymore, couldn't feel his own magic, couldn't feel the muscles in his own throat. Couldn't even feel the gag and muzzle anymore. The only way he knew he was still screaming was that it was the only thing he could hear. The world was burning up in white fire, all over his wings and his back, and it was all he could perceive, drowning every other sensation. Every time the lash fell he thought this was it, this was the maximum of pain he could bear, surely he couldn't feel any more pain than this, surely all new sensation would be swallowed by the fiery agony that already existed. And every time the lash fell again he was proven wrong. Some infinities were larger than others. Even with the pain overwhelming him, destroying mind and thought and dissolving the world in excruciating webs of fire, he could still feel more of it every time the lash fell.

In desperation Discord flung his head backward, bending his neck back as far as it would go, hoping the lash would fall against his throat and cut it. Instead it sliced across his face, cutting from one eye, across his muzzled snout, on a diagonal to his cheek, tearing it open. Agony in his eye, and half his vision turning into a red blur. An explosion of blood in his mouth, and cool air against the side of his gums where air shouldn't be unless his mouth was open and teeth bared or unless he was deliberately rearranging his face for fun. The shock and pain finally pushed him over the edge. He felt his head falling sideways, his body tipping in the same direction, felt the side of his body where his wing was mostly gone fall against the floor, and then blessed nothingness.

And then there was something so cold it burned, splashing over his injured face. He was cold, and sick, and in utter agony, and one eye wouldn't open at all. "Discord! Heal yourself!" Fluttershy was shouting, in a panicked voice, as she splashed cold water on his face to rouse him. "Please! Heal yourself _now_ or you'll die!"

It was an order. And now that he was conscious enough to hear and understand it, he had to obey. He felt his magic flowing, not really under his control, though it was always arguable how much control he had over chaos anyway and how much control it had over him. Healing magic was not chaotic, but transformation to an unexpected state was, so what he was actually doing was transforming his injured self into his uninjured self. It didn't feel warm, like he dimly remembered healing magic working back in the days when it still worked on him; it was cold, and he shivered uncontrollably. If he had control of his own magic he'd have warmed himself at the same time, but he couldn't, and after all the blood he'd lost he was so very, very cold.

"I'm sorry," Fluttershy was saying, holding his head in her lap, unbuckling his muzzle. "I'm so sorry, sweetie, I went too far, I never meant to hurt you so badly, I'm so sorry..."

Some part of him still knew it wasn't Fluttershy. But he'd just nearly died in agony, he was still lying in his own blood, and there was a pony hugging him and apologizing to him and she was warm and soft and Discord gave up. She was Fluttershy. For just a little while. Just until he didn't need her to be anymore.

She pulled the muzzle and the gag free. Discord was no longer actually injured, but he was cold and weak and shaken and the memory of pain and fear had burned into him, so he could still feel aching echoes of the pain even now that he'd healed himself. He put his lion limb around the little pegasus and drew her close, buried his snout against her soft fur, and sobbed, as she petted him and stroked his head and told him lies about how she would never hurt him like this again and just for a little while he wanted to believe it. Not forever. He wasn't breaking. He was just pretending. For a little while.


End file.
